Gardens

& Landscapes
of Portugal
Gardens & Lanscapes of Portugal,
CIUHCT/CHAIA/ CHAM/ Mediterranean Garden Society, nr.3 (May, 2015).
ISSN 2182-942X
Link: http://www.chaia_gardens_landscapesofportugal.uevora.pt/index%20home%20presentation.htm

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 Gardens & Landscapes of Portugal

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial by Ana Duarte Rodrigues 3

ARTICLES

Spreading the canon: The arrival of the obelisk fountain in Portugal

Anatole Tchikine 4

Books and the transfer of knowledge: Spreading the garden of ideas in Australia and Portugal
Richard Aitken 17

The 8th Marquis of Fronteira’s taste of gardening in its English cultural context
Ana Duarte Rodrigues and Rui Castilho de Luna 30

The Douro Valley: Landscape heritage corridor of Humanity – From the past, towards the future
Desidério Batista and Rute Sousa Matos 60

BOOK REVIEWS

COX, Madison, CHIVERS, Ruth and MUSGRAVE, Toby, The Gardener´s Garden, London: Phaidon Press, 2014.
By Isabel Soares de Albegaria 71

REMINGTON, Vanessa, Painting Paradise. The Art of the Garden, London: Royal Collection Trust, 2015.
By Ana Duarte Rodrigues 72

MICHELS, Volker (ed.), Hermann Hesse. Freude am Garten. Betrachtungen, Gedichte und Fotografien. Mit farbigen Aquarellen
des Dichters. Insel Verlag, Berlin, 2012.
By Isabel Lopes Cardoso 73

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 Gardens & Landscapes of Portugal

Editorial

Despite a non-thematic issue journal, subjects or trends do nevertheless emerge in this issue of Gardens and
Landscapes of Portugal. Among them I stress the influence and exchange of ideas, models and knowledge between
Portuguese gardens and landscapes and other European countries: one article is focused on the relationship be-
tween Portugal and Italy during the baroque and three articles focus on the relations with the British Empire in
the late eighteenth-century and the nineteenth-century. Furthermore, this issue includes two contributions from
foreign scholars making clear that Portuguese gardens and landscapes arise interest from the most reputed schol-
ars and academic institutions. And, equally important it makes clear that Gardens and Landscapes of Portugal is a field
of research with international contours, interest and value.

Anatole Tchikine offers new insights on the obelisk-fountain ordered by King D. João V for the palace-convent
Necessidades’ complex. Research done in Dumbarton Oaks’ rich library is in part the reason behind this new vi-
sion and contribution to Portuguese fountains.

One of the thematic threads emerging in this issue is the acknowledged influence of Britain: the circulation of
species and books between the British Empire and Portugal are discussed both in Richard Aitken’s work and in the
paper of Ana Duarte Rodrigues and Rui de Luna on the 8th Marquis of Fronteira. The English owners of Douro’s
quintas had a vital role in the construction of the scientific landscape of Douro’s heritage corridor of Humanity, as
shown in Desidério Batista and Rute Sousa Matos’ paper. The English cultural context is also behind the 8th Mar-
quis of Fronteira’s novel taste of gardening that changed the Fronteira garden during the late nineteenth-century
in an “almost gardenesque” style.

Furthermore, Gardens and Landscapes of Portugal journal continues its mission to reveal new documents on the
subject, in order to promote international comparative studies and research in other fields of knowledge. If in the
previous issue we were able to publish Margaret Jackson’s journal narrating in detail the construction of a Mediter-

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ranean garden, in this volume we are pleased to transcribe the 1848 Diary of the 8th Marquis of Fronteira written
when he was seventeen years old during his three months sojourn in Portugal. This manuscript source offers many
comments on the social and cultural life of Portugal, on various aspects of gardening, and points to its connec-
tions with music. Research linking gardening with other arts or scientific areas is most welcome in G&LP volumes.

All articles went through a long and heavy editorial process, involving discussion and suggestions put forward
by referees who have been decisive in the final quality of the articles published now. I am personally grateful to
them for their professionalism and dedication.

In addition to articles, this volume includes book reviews on three book indispensable books in any gardens’
library: The Gardeners Book (2014), reviewed by Isabel Albergaria; Vanessa Remington’s Painting Paradise (2015), re-
viewed by myself and Volker Michels‘s Hermann Hesse. Freude am Garten (2012) by Isabel Lopes Cardoso.

Finally, I am pleased to announce that from now on the Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da
Tecnologia (CIUHCT) joins CHAIA, CHAM and the Mediterranean Garden Society as entities that support the
editorial process of G&LP. I am especially thankful to Ana Simões for that.

Ana Duarte Rodrigues

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 Gardens & Landscapes of Portugal
Spreading the canon: The arrival of the obelisk fountain in Portugal
Anatole Tchikine
Reference: Anatole Tchikine, “Spreading the canon: The arrival of the obelisk fountain in Portugal”, Gardens & Landscapes of Portugal, CIUHCT/CHAIA/CHAM/
Mediterranean Garden Society, nr. 3 (May 2015), pp. 4-16. ISSN 2182-942X URL: <http://www.chaia_gardens_landscapesofportugal.uevora.pt/index%20
home%20presentation.htm>

ABSTRACT

A study of artistic sources, iconography, and meaning of the Chafariz das Necessidades (1747) in Lisbon, this
article attempts to reconstruct the history of the obelisk fountain from its emergence in Rome in the work of
Gianlorenzo Bernini and Filippo Barigioni to its arrival in Portugal in the mid eighteenth century. An important
instance of cross-cultural exchange, the creation of the Chafariz das Necessidades is interpreted as an act of artistic
appropriation of a distinct type of fountain associated with the papal capital, placing it in the context of urban
renewal initiated by King João V (r. 1706–50) with the construction of the Águas Livres aqueduct.

ARTICLE

Fig. 1. Chafariz das Necessidades, 1747, general view. Photograph by José Viriato.

Of all the fountains that exist in Lisbon, the Chafariz das Necessidades (dedicated in 1747) is distinguished by its
unusual form that combines the gently curving outline of a four-lobed receiving basin with the vertical thrust of
an obelisk that stands in its center (figure 1).1 Commissioned by King João V (r. 1706–50) towards the very end
Anatole Tchikine is Post-Doctoral Fellow in Garden and Landscape Studies, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
(Trustees for Harvard University), Washington, DC . His area of scholarly interests is architecture, landscape, and urbanism in early
modern Italy.
Note on fountain names. Following the standard convention, only the names of fountains that have stable equivalents in English have
been translated; hence, the Fountain of the Four Rivers, but the Fontana del Pantheon and the Chafariz das Necessidades. The word chafariz in con-
temporary Portuguese designates a public fountain, emphasizing the practical role that such structures played in supplying the population
with water; this usage was also common in the eighteenth century (cf. Henriques 1726: 58, 60–62, 64, 177, 198).
1 This date is carried by the dedicatory inscription on the fountain’s pedestal (transcribed in Vilhena Barbosa 1866: 73): B. V. Mariæ Dei
 Fig. 2. Bird’s-eye view of Lisbon, 1572, from Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg, Civitates orbis terrarum, Lisbon, Biblioteca Na-
cional de Portugal. The large open space in the center is the Terreiro do Paço; another clearing further inland, directly behind it,
is the Rossio. The large building towering above it to the left is Carmo. The Alfama is on the right, stretching along the Tagus
and below the castle of São Jorge.

of his reign, this fountain occupies the center of a small square, enclosed by a low parapet, in front of the church
of the Palácio das Necessidades—an Oratorian convent adjoined to a palace that from 1833 served as a royal resi-
dence.2 The whole architectural ensemble now rises above the rooflines of a populous neighborhood that grew in
the western periphery of the city in the twentieth century. Originally, however, it dominated the semi-rural valley
of the torrent Alcântara, being built near its confluence with the river Tagus and therefore clearly visible from the
ships heading towards or departing from the Portuguese capital.3

The subsequent urbanization of this area was largely enabled by the construction of the Águas Livres aque-
duct (1731–47) that brought running water to the western quarters of Lisbon, passing north of the Necessidades
palace and the extensive enclosed grounds behind it. Until then, the distribution of this vital resource throughout
the urban fabric was very uneven. The eastern part of the city was relatively well provided with water that came
from the hill below the castle of São Jorge; two Medieval fountains in the locality of Alfama—the Chafariz de El-
Rei and the Chafariz de Dentro—were both fed from this source. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
this water was also carried westward to the low-lying Baixa: the Rossio square on this neighborhood’s northern
edge and the Terreiro do Paço on its opposite southern end adjoining the Tagus (figure 2). The expansion of this
hydraulic network further west, however, must have been hindered by the gravity-driven technology that could not
deal with the steeply rising terrain. The result was an obvious imbalance, with large sections of the city suffering
from a chronic shortage of water.4

The two fountains erected in front of the Todos-os-Santos hospital in the Rossio square and in the center of
the Terreiro do Paço after the supply of running water had been extended to the Baixa-respectively, the Chafariz do
Rossio and the Chafariz de Apolo -were destroyed by the tsunami caused by the disastrous earthquake of 1755. Judg-
ing by contemporary representations, they were both freestanding structures characterized by somewhat heavy
forms, but with a clear attempt at monumentality manifest in the use of sculptural centerpieces.5 The fountain in
the Terreiro do Paço, which was decorated with the statue of Apollo, must have had particular urban significance
given its positioning near the port, the landing and embarkation point for various ship crews that required fresh

Gen. / Joannes V Lus. Rex. / Obse. Servatum Posuit / Die Natalis suo / An. Dom. MDCCXLVII.
2 For the history of this complex, see Ferrão 1994.
3 For the detailed analysis of this site, see Cristina Castel-Branco’s chapter in Castel-Branco, ed. 2001: 15–33.
4 The concern with the inadequate water supply of Lisbon is expressed, for example, in Francisco de Holanda’s Da fabrica que falece á cidade
de Lisboa (1571) addressed to King Sebastião I (r. 1557–78) (HOLANDA 1929: 217–18). For the scholarly perspective on this situation,
see Moita et al. (1997).
5 For these two fountains, see CAETANO 1991: 56–63.
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 Fig. 3. Fountain of the Four Rivers, from Fig. 4. Giacomo della Porta and Filippo
Giovanni Battista Falda, Le fontane di Barigioni, Fontana del Pantheon, after
Roma..., Rome 1691. Photograph: Dumbar- 1577, modified 1711, general view. Photo-
ton Oaks Research Library and Collection. graph by Anatole Tchikine.

Fig. 5. Fontana del Pantheon, from Giovanni Battista Falda, Le fontane di Roma..., Rome 1691. Photograph: Dumbarton
Oaks Research Library and Collection.

drinking water. At the same time, it probably also served the needs of the neighboring communities that lived
south and west of the dominant Carmelite friary of Carmo. This important practical role is evidenced by numer-
ous water carriers with characteristic earthenware jugs gathering under this fountain’s mushroom-like canopy, as
represented in the seventeenth-century painting by Dirk Stoop in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon.

In purely stylistic terms, the design of the Chafariz das Necessidades—whose authorship remains disputed—marks

6
 Fig. 6. Fontana del Pantheon, detail of a masca- Fig. 7. Fontana del Pantheon,
ron. Photograph by Anatole Tchikine. detail of a mascaron. Photo-
graph by Anatole Tchikine.

a departure from these traditional models.6 The marriage of two previously distinct types of civic monument, the
fountain and the obelisk, was a characteristic creation of the Roman Baroque. It was inaugurated with the Fountain
of the Four Rivers by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), commissioned by Pope Innocent X Pamphilj (r. 1644–55)
and erected in the Piazza Navona in Rome in 1648–51 (figure 3).7 The utterly convincing result that Bernini man-
aged to achieve by juxtaposing such different elements—both in function and scale—as the 16.5-m-tall Egyptian
obelisk, unearthed in 1647, and a low receiving basin, obscures the radical novelty of his creation that would have
been evident at the time. Indeed, it would take another six decades before Bernini’s solution would enter the stan-
dard repertory of forms that characterized the architecture of the papal city. This gesture of acceptance was the
remodeling of the late sixteenth-century fountain in front of the Pantheon (figure 4), carried out by the architect
Filippo Barigioni (c. 1680–1753) by order of Pope Clement XI Albani (r. 1700–21) in 1711.8

The Fontana del Pantheon, designed in 1577 by Gia-

como della Porta, belonged to the generation of sim-
ilar—decorative as well as functional, but artistically
unambitious—fountains built in the Campo Marzio
after the water of the newly restored Acqua Vergine
aqueduct had been brought to this densely populat-
ed neighborhood of Rome. Based on a characteristic
geometric plan—the superimposition of a square and
a quatrefoil—it featured a centerpiece in the form of
a heavy double urn with its outline terminating in a
short upward jet, positioned in the center of a high Fig. 8. Chafariz das Necessidades, detail of the receiving basin and
receiving basin (figure 5).9 The four rounded corners mascarons. Photograph by Cristina Castel-Branco.
of the main receptacle contained grotesque mascarons with thin spouts of water, which originally came out in
two contrasting directions (figures 6, 7). While helping unify the design, these drinking jets conveyed the largely

6 Traditionally, this fountain is attributed to Caetano Tomás de Sousa, the presumed architect of the Necessidades complex (CHAVES
s.d.: 26). His authorship, however, was challenged by Leonor Ferrão (FERRÃO 1994: 97–98). See also n. 18 below.
7 This juxtaposition was not Bernini’s invention: by the early seventeenth century, two out of four obelisks erected in Rome by Pope
Sixtus V (r. 1585–90)—those behind the church Santa Maria Maggiore and in the center of the Piazza del Popolo—were standing in
a direct relationship with a fountain or a trough; whereas another one in front of the façade of San Giovanni in Laterano had a water
feature built into its pedestal by Domenico Fontana (1543–1607). It was Bernini, however, who was responsible for putting an obelisk in
the center of a receiving basin, although this paradigmatic arrangement is already manifest in Francesco Borromini’s (1599–1667) earlier
designs for the Fountain of the Four Rivers.
8 For Barigioni’s career, see Battaglini di Stasio 1964. A detailed account of the remodeling of the Fontana del Pantheon and this project’s
urban significance is found in Marder 1974.
9 According to Katherine Rinne’s calculations, this jet could probably reach slightly over 1 m in height (RINNE 2010: 91).
7
utilitarian role that the Fontana del Pantheon played in a busy square with semi-permanent market stalls, which used
to surround it on four sides.10

Work initiated by Clement XI involved the partial clearing of this

square, causing a fundamental rethinking of the fountain’s relation-
ship with its urban surroundings, especially the hefty bulk of the
Pantheon that called for a more monumental response. The vertical
rhythm of Agrippa’s portico required a strong upward surge, unat-
tainable by the weak central jet powered by the low-pressure Acqua
Vergine. The solution was to replace the whole centerpiece with a
more dominant architectural form, for which Bernini’s Fountain of
the Four Rivers provided an obvious model. The only obelisk that the
pope appeared to have at his disposal at the time, however, was the
so-called Guglia di San Macuto (or San Mauto) that stood in the epony-
mous square next to the nearby church of Sant’Ignazio.11 Barigioni’s
Fig. 9. Gianlorenzo Bernini, Fountain of the Four
decision to mount this diminutive-only 6.3-m-tall-granite pillar on an Rivers, 1648–51, detail. Photograph by Anatole
unwieldy travertine pedestal carrying the Albani coats-of-arms, com- Tchikine
memorative inscriptions, and water-spouting dolphins at the four
corners, was criticized for making the obelisk appear puny in relation
to its oversized support (see figure 4).12 Seemingly emerging from a
bed of rockery (a likely reference to the naturalistic grotto conceived
by Bernini), the new centerpiece also stood in clear dissonance with
the crisp geometry of the receiving basin, visibly small in proportion
to the bulging sculptural mass that it now contained.

A close comparison between the Chafariz das Necessidades and these

two Roman prototypes reveals that the transfer of the obelisk foun-
Fig. 10. Giacomo della Porta, Fontana di Piazza
tain to Portugal owed less to Bernini’s original inception of the new Colonna, 1575–77, with later modifications. Pho-
monumental form than to its subsequent adaptation by Barigioni. tograph by Anatole Tchikine.
This connection is particularly evident in the presence of four sandstone heads (executed in the local pedra lioz)
with elaborate headgear, which in their number, positioning, and function correspond exactly to the sixteenth-cen-
tury mascarons—similarly flanked by dolphins—that decorate the Fontana del Pantheon (see figures 6, 7, 8). Another
shared feature is the low masonry platform with flat cascading steps on which both structures are elevated. The
modest height of the obelisk, which only reaches 6.6 m, and the bronze ornament at its top—a conventional cross
placed above a multi-rayed star as opposed to the heraldic Pamphilj dove holding a bough in its beak—also suggest
Barigioni’s project as a more immediate model for the design of the Portuguese fountain.13 The treatment of the
10 These stalls—two of which, located closer to the Pantheon, were eventually demolished—appear in contemporary maps and plans,
some of which are reproduced in Marder 1974. For the mascarons, which in 1886 were replaced with copies, see D’ONOFRIO 1962:
44–46.
11 This obelisk is shown in its original setting in Falda 1665, II (Le chiese di Roma), pls. 21 and 22.
12 Cf. BLUNT 1982: 232: “… a somewhat unhappy design in which the base seems too big for what it carries, a point which is brought
out by the fact that in the commemorative medals the obelisk is made to look much higher than it is in reality.”
13 In the Fontana del Pantheon, the star probably also had heraldic significance referring to the Albani insignia; such ornaments, however,
were commonly featured atop Roman obelisks. The association of its spiky form with the crown of thorns—which it does not really
resemble—as an instrument of Christ’s Passion (FERRÃO 1994: 132) is unwarranted. Earlier Portuguese writers like Manuel do Portal
or Cláudio da Conceição refer to a globe of gilded bronze (cited, respectively, in FERRÃO 1994: 298 and RODRIGUES 2011: 131; note
that both excerpts are variants of the same text). Inácio Vilhena Barbosa similarly mentions “um globo espinhoso” rather than “uma
8
pedestal and the receiving basin in the Chafariz das Necessidades, however, seems to offer a critique of the Fontana
del Pantheon, informed not only by references to their common progenitor in the Piazza Navona, but arguably also
the knowledge of other fountains that decorated the papal capital and the villas in the surrounding countryside.

The most problematic aspect of Barigioni’s design is the insufficient height of the obelisk, which he tried to
increase by raising it on a plinth (see figure 4). This solution was probably inspired by Bernini, who had boldly
inserted a similar block, intended to carry commemorative inscriptions, into the pedestal mounted above the
sculptural panoply of the Fountain of the Four Rivers (figure 9). In the Fontana del Pantheon, however, the result is a
compromised relationship between the obelisk and its support, with the Guglia di San Macuto soaring without any
obvious transition above the rest of the structure. Moreover, the broken silhouette of Bernini’s pedestal creates
sharp horizontal accents, which echo the simple outline of the receiving basin; while mitigating the dramatic ac-
tion unfolding below, this device also counterweighs the breathtaking vertical surge of the granite needle above
(see figures 3, 9). By contrast, Barigioni’s barely projecting cubic plinth does little to alleviate the visual anticlimax
resulting from the steeply tapering form of his centerpiece. This disappointing effect is further heightened by the
overcrowding of the sculptural decoration in the lower part of the Fontana del Pantheon, exacerbated by a sense of
confinement created by the high rim and emphatic profile of Della Porta’s receptacle.14

While clearly aware of these shortcomings, the architect of the Chafariz das Necessidades showed surprisingly
little interest in playing up tensions inherent in bold juxtapositions of plastic and architectural elements that had
engaged both Bernini and Barigioni. In practical terms, his approach involved giving the pedestal a simple geo-
metric definition, with its form—broken in the middle by a slightly protruding plinth—borrowed directly from
Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers (see figures 8, 9). While the north-eastern face of this block similarly carries
a commemorative inscription, its proportions were flattened to increase the horizontal emphasis and reduce the
height of the obelisk’s support. The receiving basin was also lowered, giving it a softer profile and a more fluid
gently undulating outline. Although its elongated form is reminiscent of two other Roman fountains—the Fon-
tana di Piazza Colonna (1575–77) (figure 10) and, to a lesser extent, the Fontana della Terrina (1590), both by Della
Porta—it probably originated in the garden setting, where such low-rimmed receptacles became common by the
turn of the seventeenth century.

In more general terms, the design of the Chafariz das Necessidades marks a pronounced tendency to sacrifice
sculptural opulence in favor of geometric simplicity, which sets it apart from both of its Roman cousins. In the
Fountain of the Four Rivers and the Fontana del Pantheon, the role of sculpture is to guide the eye upwards visually
mediating between the vertical thrust of the obelisk and the horizontal expanse of the receiving basin. Bernini’s
answer to this challenge is a complex ballet of formal addresses and responses that run through the lower sculpted
portion of his centerpiece in waves of rising motion (see figure 9). Barigioni, less successfully, tried to achieve a
comparable effect by merely agglomerating various plastic features around his pedestal. In the Chafariz das Neces-
sidades, however, sculptural accents are limited to the mascarons, almost too exuberant for their austere setting.
Although their visual impact is stronger than in the Fontana del Pantheon, the result is a somewhat sterile design,
where the main elements—the obelisk, the receiving basin, and the grotesque heads—stand in relative isolation
from one another, being united only by a sense of proportionate relationship that governs the whole composition
(see figure 1). The display of water does little to alleviate this problem. Unlike fan-like spouts that issue from the
mouths of Barigioni’s dolphins—which create diagonal rhythms visually tying the pedestal to the receiving ba-

coroa de espinhos” (VILHENA BARBOSA 1866: 73).

14 Barigioni’s drawing for the Fontana del Pantheon, now in Berlin (published in MARDER 1974: 317, fig. 13), however, shows the masca-
rons removed and the obelisk sitting on a “soft” masonry cushion, resulting in a much more coherent design.
9
sin—sparse jets coming out of the mascarons of the Chafariz das Necessidades only deepen the aesthetic disjunction
between the plasticity of these sculpted groups and the rigid form of the obelisk (see figures 1, 4).15 Besides, all
four sandstone heads are based on the same model; this decision, perhaps economically motivated, significantly
undermines their artistic appeal.

These aesthetic differences, however, only give additional prominence to the formal dependence of the Por-
tuguese fountain on those by Bernini and Barigioni. This intensive artistic dialogue demonstrates that the design
of the Chafariz das Necessidades, rather than embodying a generic reference to an obelisk as a common Egyptian
artifact, was an adaptation to Portugal of a new type of civic fountain closely associated with papal Rome. Signifi-
cantly, its centerpiece—commissioned by João V and executed in local pink marble (marmore vermelho) that came
from the area of Sintra—was not an antiquarian object and carried no hieroglyphic writings. While being the focal
element of the design, the obelisk, in other words, was treated purely as a monumental form devoid of any specif-
ically Egyptian—solar, sepulchral, or hermetic—connotations. In this important way, the Chafariz das Necessidades
stood in obvious contrast with its two Roman prototypes, which belonged to a long series of artistic projects that
marked the deliberate appropriation of Egyptian antiquity by the papacy as a means of asserting its secular and
spiritual power.16 Although emphatic about its connection with
the Eternal City, the transfer of the obelisk fountain to Portugal
therefore affirmed its universal status as an urban monument
by divesting it of these earlier, place-specific, layers of historical
meaning.

The emergence of the obelisk fountain as an independent

type in the first half of the eighteenth century is furthermore
evident in a widening stylistic rift that separates Bernini’s mas-
terpiece from its subsequent derivations. If Barigioni went out
of his way to acknowledge his artistic debt to the Fountain of
the Four Rivers—as suggests, for example, a literal inclusion of a
naturalistic snake on the southern face of his pedestal looking
towards the Pantheon (which evokes the coiling serpent above
the river gods Danube and Río de la Plata)—the subordinate role
of sculpture in the Chafariz das Necessidades made it a statement
of a completely different aesthetic. The design of the Portuguese
Fig. 11. Nicola Salvi and Luigi Vanvitelli, Chapel of St
fountain almost seems to anticipate the imminent move from John the Baptist, 1742–50, Lisbon, São Roque. Photo-
the Baroque exuberance to the Neoclassical poise that began to graph by Anatole Tchikine.
predominate across Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century. This departure from Bernini’s principles
is all the more striking given the first-hand knowledge of his work in Portugal through the Fountain of Neptune ex-
ecuted in Rome by his disciple Ercole Ferrata (1610–86) for Luís de Meneses (1632–90), third Count of Ericeira,
and brought to Lisbon in 1682.17 While asserting its formal lineage by the characteristically broken outline of the
obelisk’s support, the artistic restraint of the Chafariz das Necessidades in effect marked the reversal of Bernini’s
method of blending regular and organic, plastic and architectural forms, which gave his fountains a somewhat

15 This unresolved relationship was noted by Chaves: “O obelisco, simples, contrasta pela simplicidade com o violente barroquismo dos
blocos dos mascarões” (CHAVES s.d.: 26).
16 For the strategic deployment of Egyptian artifacts in papal Rome, see the magisterial study by Brian Curran (CURRAN 2007).
17 For this commission, see Delaforce et al. 1998; Vale 2008.
10
experimental feel in the urban setting.

Moreover, the inclusion of drinking jets in the Chafariz das Necessidades—a common practicality conspicuously
absent from the Fountain of the Four Rivers—confirms the influence of the Fontana del Pantheon on the dissemination
of the obelisk type. The Portuguese fountain’s connection with Barigioni’s project is also manifest in the analogous
task of designing it in relation to a building—in both cases, a church façade—rather than the surrounding square.
The proportioning of the Chafariz das Necessidades to the pedimented front of Nossa Senhora das Necessidades
(Our Lady of Needs) has been demonstrated by Leonor Ferrão (1994);18 this direct relationship, imbued with sub-
tle Baroque scenography, is also evident in the placement of the commemorative inscription (which, rather than
overlooking the Tagus, faces towards the church). By contrast, Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers does not stand
on the same axis with the façade of Sant’Agnese in Agone;19 as a result, it is quite ingeniously scaled to the whole
oblong expanse of the Piazza Navona that roughly corresponds to the vast arena of the ancient hippodrome of
Domitian. In the context of cross-cultural exchange, the important mediatory role played by the Fontana del Pan-
theon in transmitting the obelisk type to Portugal therefore suggests a mechanism based on the appropriation of
well-established rather than the most daring or pioneering artistic models, the latter being exemplified by Bernini’s
masterpiece before its conventional “legitimization” by Barigioni.

The Chafariz das Necessidades is usually interpreted as having been imbued with deep personal significance for
João V, who, according to the inscription on the pedestal, laid its foundation stone on his fifty-eighth birthday (22
October 1747). Although this fountain’s creation was one of the last
acts of the king’s lavish artistic patronage following the near-fatal stroke
that left him temporarily paralyzed,20 its design does not include any
royal insignia or heraldic emblems. The four mascarons represent the
Winds, whose elaborate headgear features scowling dolphins, scallop
shells, and luscious aquatic plants (including fresh-water cattails). This
combination of marine and fluvial motifs, along with a reference to the
force that filled the sails of the royal and merchant fleets, might be sug-
gestive of seafaring down the Tagus and into the Atlantic Ocean, being
an allusion to the ancient trade on which the wealth of the Portuguese
capital had been built. Indeed, the positioning of the Chafariz das Ne-
cessidades made it clearly visible from the river, while a sailing ship—the
emblem of Lisbon—was a characteristic motif in the decoration of the
city’s earlier fountains.21 The obelisk, to which the blowing Winds are vi-
Fig. 12. Reinaldo Manuel dos Santos (att.), Pro- sually anchored, however, is unambiguously a reference to papal Rome,
posal for the modification of the Chafariz das
the connection strengthened by the fountain’s axial alignment with the
Necessidades, second half of the eighteenth cen-
tury, Lisbon, Museu da Cidade. Oratorian church.

18 See the elevation drawing in FERRÃO 1994: 178. This close proportional relationship with the façade of Nossa Senhora das Necessi-
dades seems to point to Eugenio dos Santos (1711–60), who was responsible for the exterior of the church, as a likely candidate for the
fountain’s authorship.
19 Cf. WITTKOWER 1997: 175. It should be remembered, however, that Bernini’s fountain preceded the rebuilding of Sant’Agnese
(which had originally faced away from the Piazza Navona), begun by Girolamo Rainaldi (1570–1655) in 1652.
20 Hence the association of this fountain with the king’s “miraculous rebirth” (FERRÃO 1994: 132), even though the inscription itself
does not make this connection explicit.
21 Such plaques, which conveyed the municipal status of these fountains, are found, for example, on the Chafariz de Dentro, the Chafariz
do Andaluz, the Bica dos Olhos, and the Fonte Santa dos Prazeres. Images of sailing vessels also decorate the Chafariz de El-Rey, although they
date from its nineteenth-century refashioning.
11
 This iconography, rather than suggesting a specific program, seems to associate the meaning of the Chafariz
das Necessidades with the broader political and urbanistic agendas promulgated by João V. The king’s life-long fasci-
nation with the papal capital provided a lasting source of inspiration for his architectural projects. This influence
is testified, for example, by his persistent—if not always satisfactory—attempts to engage the services of the
leading Italian architect Filippo Juvarra (1678–1736)22 and by commissioning the opulent chapel of St John the
Baptist (1742–47), almost dazzling in its rich polychromy, for the church of São Roque (figure 11). Executed in
Rome according to the designs by Nicola Salvi (1698–1751) and Luigi Vanvitelli (1700–73) and originally installed
in Sant’Antonio dei Portoghesi, this Baroque showpiece had been consecrated by Pope Benedict XIV Lambertini
(r. 1740–58) prior to its transfer to Lisbon in 1747.

The king’s involvement with the papacy, however, was not limited to artistic matters. Throughout his reign,
João V resorted to the papal authority to promote the standing of his realm and the prestige of its capital. His
major diplomatic triumph was the establishment of the patriarchal see of Lisbon, granted by the bull In supremo
apostolatus (1716) issued by Barigioni’s patron Clement XI. The result was Lisbon’s elevation to a higher ecclesias-
tical status among other European capitals, bringing about its temporary division into the Eastern and Western
cities—the jurisdictions, respectively, of the old archbishop and the new patriarch—abolished only by Benedict
XIV in 1740. Concurrent with this odd diocesan partition, the construction of the Águas Livres aqueduct certainly
imbued it with the spirit of urban renewal. In this context, the message proclaimed by the obelisk in the design of
the Chafariz das Necessidades must have alluded to the king’s act of civic benefaction, through which the whole city
of Lisbon, as previously Rome, had finally been provided with fresh drinking water.

The symbolic significance of the Chafariz das Necessidades as the earliest among the fountains of the Águas
Livres and the only one created during the reign of João V—as testified by the date of its dedication has not re-
ceived sufficient emphasis in scholarly literature (which instead tends to accentuate its personal significance for the
king).23 The reasons for this peculiar downplaying of this fountain’s urban role presumably derive from its analysis
by Joaquim Oliveira Caetano (1991), who questioned its original function as a public source of water.24 The prin-
cipal evidence for this interpretation is a drawing in the Museu da Cidade in Lisbon, which the scholar attributed
to the architect Reinaldo Manuel dos Santos (1731–91) (figure 12). This interesting document is a proposal for the
fountain’s remodeling, with the original design, shown in the upper half, juxtaposed with the modified version be-
low (which corresponds to the current appearance of the Chafariz das Necessidades). The comparison between these
two projects reveals that the changes principally concerned the enlargement of the receiving basin, which had to
be dismantled and then assembled again further distance away from the mascarons (whose position, however, re-
mained the same as did that of the obelisk). While correctly associating these interventions with the exigencies of
the practical use of the Chafariz das Necessidades, Caetano saw them as signaling the fountain’s transformation from
a purely decorative into a utilitarian structure. This functional reorientation, in his opinion, must have occurred
between 1772 and 1791, during Manuel dos Santos’s tenure as the head engineer of the Águas Livres aqueduct.

To support his conclusion, Caetano drew attention to the previously narrower gap between the mascarons and
the rim of the receiving basin. The decision to widen it, he speculated, must have meant that water had originally

22 For Juvarra’s projects in Portugal, see WITTKOWER 1982: 414, 563 n. 34.
23 SEE FERRÃO 1994: 132–33, 135, whose interpretation of the Chafariz das Necessidades involves such far-fetched conjectures as the
use of water as an allusion to the Zodiac sign of João V (begging an obvious question why the same point could not have been made
more directly by including the image of Scorpio). In general, her reading, while focusing on the significance of the obelisk as a vestige of
the Egyptian past, fails to address the whole new set of meanings that it acquired by being mounted on a fountain.
24 CAETANO 1991: 112. Chaves, however, was also hesitant about ascribing this fountain practical significance in view of its monu-
mental design (CHAVES s.d.: 26).
12
 Fig. 13A. Obelisk fountain in the garden Fig. 13B. Obelisk fountain in the garden of Alcobaça, detail. Photograph by
of the monastery of Alcobaça, mid eight- Cristina Castel-Branco.
eenth century. Photograph by Cristina
Castel-Branco.

issued sideways instead of forwards, coming out of the snouts of the dolphins rather than the blowing heads
(see figure 8). This hypothesis, however, contradicts other evidence regarding the Chafariz das Necessidades. The
dolphins’ mouths, for example, are not bored, as they should have been in order to serve as spouts; whereas the
building accounts pertaining to the Necessidades complex (1752), published by Ferrão, and the fountain’s contem-
porary description by the Oratorian Father Manuel do Portal (1756) both refer to the mascarons (carrancas) rather
than their paraphernalia as a means of emitting water.25 Besides, Manuel dos Santos’s drawing includes two other
modifications overlooked by Caetano: first, the shallow duct, colored in darker gray, carved into the upper step;
and, second, the lowered rim of the receiving basin, with its profile altered by a deeply undercut molding (see fig-
ures 1, 8, 12).26 These changes, clearly intended to help collect and channel runoff, must have addressed a serious
miscalculation of the fountain’s original architect, whereby water had spilled beyond its receptacle by overflowing
the rim. As a measure to reduce spillage and facilitate ac-
cess, however, this expensive remodeling of the Chafariz
das Necessidades—contrary to Caetano’s opinion—could
have only been caused by persistent problems involving
its precedent use as a public source of water.

Another reason for the scholarly caution regarding

this fountain’s urban role might concern its peripheral lo-
cation. Indeed, it was positioned at the end of a separate
branch of the Águas Livres aqueduct,27 specially built to
carry water to the new Oratorian establishment and its
Fig. 14. Chafariz de São Domingo de Benfica, 1791, general view.
enclosed grounds (cerca, sometimes also referred to as Photograph by Anatole Tchikine.

25 Cited in FERRÃO 1994: 280, 299 (references, respectively, to “[uma] mascara para lançar agoa”; “quarto carrancas de pedra, para
lançarem agoa.”) It is not clear from Manuel do Portal’s description whether the fountain was actually playing at the time of writing.
26 Significantly, a similar draining conduit also appears in the Chafariz das Janelas Verdes (1755) designed by Manuel dos Santos, indirectly
confirming his connection with this drawing.
27 See the aqueduct’s map (1895) reproduced in Moita et al. 1997: 20–21.
13
quinta). This concession, in fact, was deemed so generous that it caused a good deal of controversy at the time.28
From 1779, runoff from the Chafariz das Necessidades was conducted to the neighboring convents of Sacramento
and Livramento, located closer to the waterfront.29 Apart from these religious institutions, contemporary maps
and views show little development in this area except a few houses that stretched along the road to Belém.30 In this
semi-rural setting, the fountain’s monumental form seems to strike a somewhat incongruous note. Once again, a
comparison with papal Rome might help explain its peculiar significance. Unlike the original Fontana del Pantheon
and other related projects by Della Porta that celebrated the provision of water to the center of the city, early sev-
enteenth-century Roman fountains often carried a different message. For example, two of Bernini’s most famous
works—the Fontana della Barcaccia (1627–29) and the Fountain of Triton (1642–43)—were designed for suburban
neighborhoods in the area of the Pincian Hill that were yet to be properly absorbed into the urban fabric.31 Lo-
cated next to gardens (vigne) and pastures, these fountains were not merely sumptuous statements of the Barberini
patronage intended to share their artistic prestige with the relatively humble surroundings; in an equally important
way, they were catalysts of urban expansion, signaling the availability of aqueduct water for distribution and hence
the improved dwelling conditions for the populace.32

In conclusion, it remains to be emphasized that the three main fountains discussed here—the Fountain of the
Four Rivers, the Fontana del Pantheon, and the Chafariz das Necessidades—were not isolated instances of the use of
the obelisk in the urban context. Although driven by different agendas, they marked the emergence of the new
canonical type of fountain, which originated in Rome, but soon spread across Europe owing to its monumental
form and dominant vertical emphasis. Its subsequent derivations ranged from the Obeliskbrunnen (1777) at the
Schönbrunn Palace near Vienna—where the soaring centerpiece was re-contextualized yet again by its transfer to
the garden setting and the addition of bizarre pseudo-Egyptian hieroglyphs glorifying the Habsburg dynasty—to
the gigantic Obelisk Fountain (1923–30) in the Veterans Memorial Plaza in Indianapolis. In Portugal, an intriguing
example stands in the garden of the Cistercian monastery at Alcobaça north of Lisbon, where it was recorded
in 1789 by the Irish architect James Cavanah Murphy (1760–1814).33 Positioned on a polygonal island in a large
elliptical pool, this fountain features a rusticated obelisk with an oddly truncated top, which must have terminated
in a bronze ornament; the four faces of its pedestal are decorated with Baroque mascarons, whose bored mouths
indicate that originally they spouted water (figures 13a, 13b). Although heavily stylized and lacking in volumetric
richness, these masks bear certain resemblance to the blowing heads on the Chafariz das Necessidades, which—given
the likely proximity of their dates—suggests an interchange of forms and motifs between garden and urban foun-
tains that had also been characteristic of Bernini’s Rome.34

In Lisbon, however, the future of the obelisk type seems to have been limited mainly to unexecuted projects.
They included Miguel Angelo de Blasco’s proposal for the Chafariz do Largo de São Paulo (1760s)—with four wa-

28 ANDRADE 1851: 229–35 (without indicating the dates of these documents).

29 ANDRADE 1851: 85 (with reference to the decree of 22 September 1779); Flores, who gives the date 22 September 1799, presumably
refers to the same document (FLORES 1999: 52, 98 n. 89).
30 A representative selection of these images is published in CASTEL-BRANCO, ed. 2001: 15–33.
31 For the original setting of the Fontana della Barcaccia, see TCHIKINE 2011: 311.
32 Significantly, the analogous role of the Águas Livres fountains in the transformation of the urban fabric of Lisbon was noted by
Caetano (CAETANO 1991: 27).
33 “In the centre of the garden is a fine oval pond, of an hundred and thirty feet on the transverse diameter, with an obelisk in the centre
of it” (MURPHY 1795: 98). I am indebted to Cristina Castel-Branco for bringing this fountain to my attention.
34 The adaptation of garden motifs in the context of the city was one of underlying principles of Bernini’s approach to fountain design
(see TCHIKINE 2011: 323–28). In the case of the obelisk fountain at Alcobaça, as subsequently at Schönbrunn, the opposite process
presumably has taken place.
14
ter-spouting dolphins attached to the faces of the pedestal, whose positioning and attitudes presented a less suc-
cessful adaptation of Barigioni’s diagonal arrangement—and the overambitious design for the Chafariz do Campo
de Santana (c. 1789–94) by another eighteenth-century architect Francisco António Ferreira Cangalhas.35 Besides, a
short pyramidal pillar accentuates the discreet location of the privately sponsored Chafariz de São Domingo de Benfica
(1791) in the immediate vicinity of the Fronteira gardens (figure 14).36 Thus, while continuing to stimulate artistic
imagination, the obelisk fountain erected by João V in front of the Necessidades palace did not have a significant
following in the Portuguese capital. Announced by the construction of the Águas Livres aqueduct, however, its
message of urban renewal soon found a direct continuation in the Pombaline restoration of the Baixa struck by
the natural disaster on 1 November 1755—even if guided by different, French rather than Italian,37 architectural
models.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My principal debt is to Cristina Castel-Branco, who has closely followed work on this article from its inception
and provided many important materials and suggestions as it progressed. She also, indirectly, brought me into
contact with José-Augusto França, whom I would like to thank for a valuable consultation. The feedback from two
anonymous reviewers has been crucial for clarifying specific points, correcting errors, and updating bibliographi-
cal references; I am deeply indebted to both of them. Special thanks are to José Viriato and, once again, Cristina
Castel-Branco for allowing me to use their excellent photography and to Linda Lott for putting at my disposal the
resources of the Rare Books Library at Dumbarton Oaks. Finally, I am profoundly grateful to Ana Rodrigues for
encouraging me to contribute this article to her journal, and, even more importantly, for being my first onsite guide
to the art and culture of Portugal.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ANDRADE, José Sérgio Veloso de (1851), Memória sobre chafarizes, bicas, fontes, e poços públicos de Lisboa, Belém, e muitos logares
do termo, Lisbon: Imprensa Silviana.

BATTAGLINI DI STASIO, Renata (1964), “Barigioni, Filippo,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Rome: Istituto della
Enciclopedia italiana, VI, p. 365.

BLUNT, Anthony (1982), Guide to Baroque Rome, New York et al.: Harper & Row.

CAETANO, Joaquim Oliveira (1991), Chafarizes de Lisboa, Sacavém: Distri Editora.

CASTEL-BRANCO, Cristina, ed. (2001), Necessidades: the gardens and enclosure, Lisbon: Livros Horizonte.

CHAVES, Luis (s.d.), Chafarizes de Lisboa, Lisbon: Edição da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa.

CURRAN, Brian (2007), The Egyptian Renaissance: the afterlife of ancient Egypt in early modern Italy, Chicago and London: the
University of Chicago Press.

DELAFORCE, Angela, et al. (1998), “A fountain by Gianlorenzo Bernini and Ercole Ferrata in Portugal,” The Burlington
Magazine, 140/12, pp. 804–11.

35 Both drawings are in the Museu da Cidade in Lisbon; for illustrations, see CAETANO 1991: 135, 202.
36 For this fountain, commissioned by Gérard Devisme, see CAETANO 1991: 142–45.
37 For the development of the place royale as a model of urban planning and its adoption in Lisbon as the Praça do Comércio (which
replaced the Terreiro do Paço), see SUMMERSON 1969: 154–62.
15
 D’ONOFRIO, Cesare (1962), Le fontane di Roma con documenti e disegni inedite, Rome: Staderini Editore.

FALDA, Giovanni Batista (1665), Il nuovo teatro delle fabriche, et edifici, in prospettiva di Roma moderna…, Rome : Giovanni
Iacomo de’ Rossi.

FERRÃO, Leonor (1994), A real obra de Nossa Senhora das Necessidades, Lisbon: Quetzal.

FLORES, Alexandre M. (1999), Chafarizes de Lisboa, Lisbon: Inapa.

HENRIQUES, Francisco da Fonseca (1726), Aquilegio medicinal…, Lisbon: Officina da Musica. 

HOLANDA, Francisco de (1929), “Da fabrica que falece á cidade de Lisboa por Francisco de Olanda (1571),” ed. Alber-
to Cortês, publ. Vergilio Correia, Archivo español de arte y arquelogía, 15/4, pp. 209–24.

MOITA, Ana Paula et al. (1997), Lisboa e o aqueduto: Lisbon and the aqueduct, Lisbon: Câmara Municipal de Lisboa.

MARDER, Tod (1974), “Piazza della Rotonda e la Fontana del Pantheon: un rinnovamento urbanistico di Clemente XI,”
Arte illustrata, 7/4, pp. 310–20.

MURPHY, James (1795), Travels in Portugal…, London: Strahan, Cadell, and Davies.

RINNE, Katherine Wentworth (2010), The waters of Rome: aqueducts, fountains, and the birth of the Baroque city, New Haven
and London: Yale University Press.

RODRIGUES, Ana Duarte (2011), A escultura de jardim das quintas e palácios dos séculos XVII e XVIII em Portugal, Lisbon:
Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

SUMMERSON, John (1969), The architecture of the eighteenth century, London: Thames and Hudson.

TCHIKINE, Anatole (2011), “Galera, navicella, barcaccia? Bernini’s fountain in Piazza di Spagna revisited,” Studies in the
History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 31/4, pp. 311–31.

VALE, Teresa Leonor Magalhães do (2008), “La Fontana di Nettuno nei giardini del palazzo di Lisbona dei conti di Eri-
ceira, un opera di Gian Lorenzo Bernini e Ercole Ferrata in Portogallo,” in Traduzioni, imitazioni, scambi tra Italia e Portogallo nei
secoli, ed. Monica Lupetti, Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, pp. 137–62.

VILHENA BARBOSA, Inácio de (1866), “Chafariz do largo das Necessidades,” Archivo pittoresco, IX, pp. 73–74.

WITTKOWER, Rudolf (1982), Art and architecture in Italy 1600 to 1750, 5th ed., New Haven and London: Yale University
Press.
WITTKOWER, Rudolf (1997), Bernini: the sculptor of the Roman Baroque, 4th ed., London: Phaidon.

16
 Gardens & Landscapes of Portugal
Books and the transfer of knowledge: spreading the garden of ideas in
Australia and Portugal
Richard Aitken
Reference: Richard Aitken, “Books and the transfer of knowledge: spreading the garden of ideas in Australia and Portugal”, Gardens & Landscapes of Portugal,
CIUHCT/CHAIA/CHAM/Mediterranean Garden Society, nr. 3 (May 2015), pp. 17-29. ISSN 2182-942X URL: <http://www.chaia_gardens_landscapesofportugal.
uevora.pt/index%20home%20presentation.htm>

ABSTRACT

Australia and Portugal are rarely linked, yet through many similarities in climate, topography, relationship to
dominant European centres, and reception of ideas about garden making they also have much in common.
Just how these points of commonality were manifest, and the means of knowledge transfer, are here examined
through printed texts relating to plant taxonomy, horticulture, aesthetics, and garden design1. These texts include
books and periodicals, and embrace imported, translated, and local sources, with a focus on the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, a period of rebuilding in Portugal after the Lisbon earthquake (1755) and the European
colonisation of Australia (1788).

ARTICLE

The year 1788 stands as a signal marker in the history of Australia, as it was on the 26th of January that year
when Governor Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet arrived in Port Jackson (Sydney) from Britain, marking Eu-
ropean colonisation of the large continent variously denominated as Terra Australis Incognita, Java la Grande, and
New Holland. Only eighteen years earlier, Captain James Cook, on his first voyage (1768–71), had explored the
country’s east coast, his botanist Joseph Banks revelling in the rich and perplexing new flora. Nowhere was this
exploration better commemorated than in the naming of Botany Bay (just south of Port Jackson), which for many
years stood as shorthand for the new continent and its early convict settlement.

Previously, Dutch explorers had made several sightings and landfalls from 1606 and the British mariner William
Dampier had touched on the north-west coast in 1699, gathering a few plant specimens, but otherwise dismissing
the potentialities of the land. The Portuguese had also charted parts of the Australian coast many years earlier,
perhaps by ships blown off course en route to the East Indies, but as a field for colonisation Australia paled in

Fig. 1. Title page and vignetted view from Lycett’s Views in Austra-
lia (London, 1824–25) showing an idealised landscape modified by
pre-European burning and post-colonisation agriculture and pastoral-
ism (Lycett 1824: title page). [State Library of Victoria]

Richard Aitken is an Australian-based historian and curator who has written and lectured extensively, and has co-edited The Oxford
Companion to Australian Gardens (2002) and the journal Australian Garden History (2007–15).

1 These are ideas I have tackled for Australia in my book The Garden of Ideas (Aitken 2010).
the shadow of Brazil and her fabled riches2. France too had enjoyed designs on Australia, although the voyage
of Bougainville (1766–69) had been forced too far north and east denying a viable landing place and Lapérouse
arrived in Sydney in February 1788, just days after Phillip had claimed the continent for the British crown.

Fig. 2. Engraving of the Wedgwood Sydney Cove medallion (1789), made

with Australian clay and showing in allegorical form Hope encouraging Art
and Labour, under the influence of Peace to give security and happiness to
the new settlement, included by Erasmus Darwin to accompany his poem
The Botanic Garden (London, 1791) (Darwin 1791: 87). [Special Collections,
Baillieu Library, The University of Melbourne]

The land was claimed under the doctrine of terra nullius, a legal nicety that assumed there was no prior occu-
pation; literally that the land previously belonged to nobody or had no prior sovereignty. Yet this overlooked the
long prior occupation of Indigenous Australians, who perceptive observers quickly noted as possessing consid-
erable attachment to the land and exhibiting a high degree of sophistication in their existence living on country
often regarded as inhospitable. In coastal fringes, where the land was often likened by early European observers
to a gentleman’s park, this appearance was due in large measure to a widespread burning regime that increased its
abundance, a process that has in part yielded what Australian historian Bill Gammage has expressively described
as ‘the largest estate on earth’ (GRAMMAGE 2011).

At the time of the First Fleet’s arrival, Banks was resident in London’s Soho Square sitting on vast collections
(CARTER 1987, CARTER 1988, BANKS et al 1994). A savant with a storied career, he possessed a fine library,
was the centre of an extensive scientific network, and de facto director of the King’s Garden at Kew (reconstituted
after 1841 as the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew). London at that time vied with Paris as an international centre of
plant taxonomy, and if shaded slightly by their French botanical counterparts, Banks’s contemporaries could cer-
tainly claim distinction in the realm of garden design. Botany, like garden design and horticulture, was undergoing
a thorough transformation, with Humphry Repton commencing his influential career as a landscape gardener in
1788.

France, in 1788, was on the cusp of revolution. Bibliographer Franz Stafleu has identified this year and the five-
year span it commenced as a crucial period in plant taxonomy (STAFLEU 1963). By this date the Linnaean sexual
or artificial system of plant classification was being overtaken by natural systems promoted by French botanists.
Stafleu points to Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu’s Genera plantarum (Paris, 1789) as they key work in this transforma-
tion—observing the work’s genesis, Jussieu’s son captured the urgency of its writing and printing during 1788–79:
‘he was seldom, during the printing, above two sheets in advance of the compositors’ (Penny Cyclopaedia 1839).
Through all this revisionist zeal, however, the Linnaean system of binomial nomenclature stood firm.

2 The Portuguese discovery of Australia is contested: for the modern work that renewed speculation see The Secret Discovery of Australia
(McIntyre 1977). For recent analysis (in Portuguese) see Simões and Domingues (2013).
18
 Working in Paris during this time of ferment was the Portuguese botanist Félix de Avelar Brotero, who had
relocated there in 1778 (CASTEL-BRANCO 2004). Although Brotero’s first major book, his Compendio de Botanica
(Paris, 1788), was published in Paris, it was written in Portuguese to explain escritores modernos, expostas na lingua Portu-
gueza, that is modern writings on botany (including classification according to the natural system), to an audience in
Portugal (BROTERO 1788). The role of the text and language were made explicit through the title and language
of the Compendio and its didactic intent was purposeful towards a nation whose ascendency in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries as maritime authority had been challenged by the Dutch, Spanish and English, but whose trade
with Brazil still made Portugal a formidable power.

Another who adopted the natural system of classification championed by Jussieu, was Portuguese philosopher,
diplomat, politician and scientist José Correia de Serra, who as Abbé Correa is remembered in the Australian
genus Correa, named in his honour in 1798. Correia de Serra contributed his own refinements to the natural sys-
tem, stressing the importance of affinities rather than differences in classification. Portuguese born and Italian
educated, Correia da Serra had relocated to London in the mid-1790s due to political differences; this followed
an earlier forced relocation to Paris during 1786 to 1791. As a founder of the Academia Real das Ciências de Lisboa,
Abbé Correa was easily accepted into the circle of the Royal Society in London, where he found an ally in Joseph
Banks. Like Brotero, Correia de Serra was one who escaped religious or political persecution in Portugal and made
his mark outside his native country. Assessing his contribution, Maria Paula Diogo, Ana Carneiro, and Ana Simões
note the importance to Portuguese science of estrangeirados, ‘Europeanised’ Portuguese intellectuals, ‘pivotal in
the introduction, dissemination and propagation of the new sciences in Portugal’ (DIOGO at al. 2001: 353).
Correia de Serra’s writings were mostly in the form of the journal articles, a critical means of timely knowledge
dissemination. From an Australian viewpoint, his work alongside Banks in London resulted in his naming of the
outstanding horticultural introduction, Doryanthes excelsa, the Gymea lily from New South Wales (CORREIA DE
SERRA 1802).

Fig. 3. Title page and frontispiece from Domingos Vandelli’s Diccionario dos Ter-
mos Technicos de Historia Natural (Coimbra, 1788) with its intriguing birds-eye gar-
den view (Vandelli 1788: frontispiece, title page). [Fundo Antigo, Faculdade de
Ciências, Universidade do Porto]

The Italian-born Domenico Vandelli (Domingos Vandelli in Portugal) shared a link with Brotero as a director
of the University Botanic Garden at Coimbra, in northern Portugal—Vandelli had been a professor at Coimbra
from 1772–91 and Brotero from 1791–1811. Coimbra was one of two botanic gardens established by the Marquis
19
of Pombal, the other being at Ajuda, Lisbon, opened in 1768 with input from Vandelli. Like Brotero, Vandelli
published a major book in 1788, his Diccionario dos Termos Technicos de Historia Natural (Coimbra, 1788) (VANDELLI
1788). From a garden history viewpoint, away from the technical content the frontispiece of Vandelli’s Diccionario
presents an intriguing engraved bird’s-eye plan of a garden, evoking Coimbra yet sufficiently generic to represent
Portuguese garden making. A garlanded medallion dedicated to Queen Maria I hovers providentially if somewhat
ominously above as protector of sciences and arts.

Botanical science and art at this period in Britain was dominated by the Royal Gardens at Kew. Here Sir Joseph
Banks (knighted in 1795) continued his work linking the science of botany with the theory and practice of horti-
culture, particularly regarding exotic species. Banks was a great facilitator rather than an active worker. He sent out
or supported plant collectors to Australia in the late eighteenth century, such as David Burton and George Suttor;
encouraged the universal work of plant taxonomy and botanical illustration; and provided great encouragement
for further botanical exploration. Robert Brown, for instance, who had been introduced to Correia de Serra by
the British botanist William Withering, and then subsequently recommended by him to Banks, took the major
role as naturalist on the Investigator voyage of Matthew Flinders to Australia (1801–05), a voyage that Banks had
urged the Admiralty to undertake as a counter to the French expedition under Baudin. Brown’s work resulted in
the first Flora of Australia, the unfinished Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen (London 1810),
‘important in re-introducing the “natural system” of botany to England’ according to Brown’s biographer David
Mabberley (MABBERLEY 2002).

Botanic gardens stood at the junction of science and art, but by the end of the eighteenth century they were not
necessarily at the cutting edge of design. That instead was the province of domestic gardens. Yet botanical explo-
ration had made a significant contribution to botanic gardens and similarities between Portugal and Australia can
be located in the framework of scientific exchange, especially as this affected plant exchanges and acclimatisation
of exotic species. (BROCKWAY 1979; MCCRACKEN 1997; LIVINGSTONE 2003). In this respect, the career
of Joseph Banks and his circulation of scientific knowledge are well known (GASCOIGNE 1994; Gascoigne
1998). Less well known, especially to non-English speaking audiences, are figures such as Brotero, Vandelli, or
Link. Heinrich Friedrich Link had travelled extensively in Portugal during 1797–99, with his account published in
German and English in 1801 and in French in 1805 (LINK 1801a; LINK 1801b; LINK 1803). Link and his travel-
ling partner Johann Centurius Hoffmannsegg published a supplementary volume and are today best remembered
for their Flore portugaise (1809–40). Link’s subsequent directorship of the botanic garden at Berlin (1815–51) ele-
vated him to the top job in one of the most significant and influential among European botanic gardens. London
nursery proprietor and botanist Robert Sweet, for instance, in his botanical and horticultural work on Australian
plants Flora Australasica (London, 1827–28), quoted Link3 as an authority (SWEET 1827–28).

The concept of a system garden, wherein plants might be arrayed according to their classification or naming,
was a feature of many of the earliest botanic gardens. Yet the reconciliation of evolving botanical classificatory
systems with garden design was fraught: classification and taxonomy might be changed with new books or revised
editions, but gardens were much slower to grow and more difficult to change. Rather it was the practical accli-
matization of exotic plants that had the greater impact on garden design than their theoretical classification or
nomenclature.

The domestication of primitive plant species and then the acclimatization of exotic plants had influenced
gardening across the ages, but quickened in its impact from the time of the Renaissance and the great age of

3 Sweet quoted Link’s ‘Enumeratio plantarum horti regii botanici Berolinensis’, 2 vol. 8vo. 1821–1822.’
20
maritime exploration. West Asian fruits and New World introductions broadened the range of edible plants, while
floriculture and arboriculture were enriched by species from southern Africa, eastern Asia, and Mesoamerica. Re-
cently, Andrea Wulf ’s complementary pair of books The Brother Gardeners and The Founding Gardeners has eloquently
demonstrated how a similar palette of trees and shrubs could, in the eighteenth century, invest English gardens
with new richness through novel American introductions whilst at the same time be used on home soil to frame
an emerging American national identify (WULF 2008; WULF 2011).

Although acclimatization was largely a practical affair, few gardening handbooks failed to include cultural
directions for the most popular species. For Australian species introduced into Europe, these books included
Steele’s An Essay upon Gardening (London, 1793), Cushing’s The Exotic Gardener (Dublin, 1811), and Theuss’s Allge-
meines Blumen-Lexicon (Weimar, 1811) alongside periodical publications such as those edited by Curtis and Andrews
and expensive plate books (STEELE 1793; CUSHING 1811; THEUSS 1811). Comparable Portuguese-language
horticultural publications are rare, but information can be found in Andrada e Silva’s Memoria sobre a necessidade e
utilidades do plantio de novos bosques em Portugal (Lisboa, 1815) and Encarnação Lobo’s O jardineiro (Coimbra, 1824)
(ANDRADA E SILVA 1815; ENCARNAÇÃO LOBO 1824). Books such as Theuss’s Allgemeines Blumen-Lexicon
indicate the widespread interest in northern European of plant acclimatization. Such advice was, however, almost
universally directed towards planting in glazed and heated plant houses of northern Europe. Practical compari-
sons suggest that Australia and Portugal enjoyed a range of similar warm temperate and sub-tropical climates, with
Sydney (34º S) being roughly comparable in latitude to Lisbon (31º N) and therefore a different range of plants
suited to outdoor cultivations were favoured.

In Australia, the earliest acclimatization had been concentrated on European fruit trees, but as the nineteenth
century progressed, species indigenous to Portugal (and often with wide distribution across the Mediterranean)
including Arbutus unedo, Ceratonia siliqua, Pinus pinaster, Prunus lusitanica, and Quercus suber were progressively intro-
duced into parks and gardens. In Portugal, the rich lode of the acclimatization movement of the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries was to be seen in botanic gardens, at Palácio Nacional da Pena in Sintra from the 1840,
and much later elsewhere in Sintra and at the Mata Nacional do Buçaco, where native Iberian species sat alongside
a wide range of introductions, many from Australia including Acacia, Araucaria, and Eucalyptus spp., Ficus macrophyl-
la, and Grevillea robusta.

The great period of Australian introductions to Portugal was, however, in the mid-nineteenth century during
which the subtropical splendour of giant araucarias began louchly protruding from clipped Baroque parterres, and
massive eucalypts and tree ferns appeared in cool temperate dells such as those of Buçaco. Some Australian trees
(particularly Acacia dealbata and Eucalyptus globulus) are now considered weed species and yet this clouds the rich
nineteenth-century history of Australian plants in Portugal. But this was in the future, later than the period under
consideration, and in both Portuguese and Australian garden design it was the influence of books and published
ideas rather than the acclimatization of exotic plants that arguably produced a more profound impact in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Garden historian Ana Duarte Rodrigues has identified several of the seminal works of aesthetics that have
influenced taste (RODRIGUES 2014a). These included Hogarth’s The Analysis of Beauty (London, 1753), Burke’s
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London, 1757), David Hume’s essay ‘Of
the standard of taste’ in his Four Dissertations (London, 1757), and Gerard’s An Essay on Taste (London, 1759). But
as Rodrigues has pointed out, these works did not necessarily circulate widely in Portugal, and nor did they exert
a direct influence on garden design (RODRIGUES 2011). In Australia, an educated elite may have been familiar

21
 Fig. 4. Title page from William Hogarth’s The Analysis of Beauty (London, 1753) showing the
serpentine line of beauty, intended to promote variety over formality (Hogarth 1753: i). [Spe-
cial Collections, Baillieu Library, The University of Melbourne]

with these works, but in the years before 1810, and the arrival of Governor Macquarie, subsistence rather than
ornamental gardening was a necessity. Yet concepts such as beauty and sublimity, and their application to garden
design, remained powerful concepts of aesthetics well into the nineteenth century, evidenced by the earliest local
book on garden design, Shepherd’s Lectures on Landscape Gardening in Australia (Sydney, 1836) (SHEPHERD 1836).

It was, rather, the transformation of aesthetic ideas through observations of exemplary places and in design
manifestos based on the prevailing landscape gardening movement that had a more profound impact on garden
design (RODRIGUES 2011: 133–34). In this respect, works such as Whately’s Observations on Modern Gardening
(London, 1770), Walpole’s The History of the Modern Taste in Gardening (London, 1780), and Gilpin’s Remarks on Forest
Scenery (London, 1791) provided a practical, historical and theoretical basis for ‘modern gardening’ (WHATELY
1770; WALPOLE 1780; GILPIN 1791). And as historians Dora Wiebenson and John Dixon Hunt have demon-
strated (WIEBENSON 1978; HUNT 2003), works such as Morel’s Théorie de Jardins (Paris, 1776), Girardin’s De la
Composition des Paysages (Genève, 1777), and Delille’s poem Les Jardins (Paris, 1782) communicated new ideas on the
jardin anglois to French-language readers (MOREL 1776; GIRARDIN 1777; DELILLE 1782). Interchange was
also provided by French translations of English works, such as Whately’s L’Art de Former des Jardins Modernes (Paris,
1771), Gilpin’s Voyage en Différentes Parties de l’Angleterre ... contenant des Observationes relatives aux beautés pittoresques (Par-
is & Londres, 1789), and Mason’s Le jardin anglois (Paris, 1788) (WHATELY 1771; GILPIN 1789; MASON 1788).
Likewise, several significant French works were translated into English, including Girardin’s An Essay on Landscape
(London, 1783) and Delille’s The Garden (London, 1789) (GIRARDIN 1783; DELILLE 1789).4

Poems such as Thomson’s The Seasons (London, 1730; rev. ed. 1746) and Mason’s The English Garden (London,
1772), with their numerous garden observations, had paved the way for the success of Delille’s Les Jardins that ran
from 1782 through many editions (THOMSON 1730; MASON 1772). In a Portuguese context, Delille’s poem
stands as an important marker in the modern revival of national identity through its 1800 translation by Manuel
Maria Barbosa du Bocage into the native language (DELILLE 1800). This came at a time in the late eighteenth
century when Portuguese national identify was being reasserted through the publication of celebrated authors and
poets in the Portuguese language.

This historical shift was the subject of comment as early as the 1820s, when the German critic Friedrich
Bouterwek noted that the work of Portuguese poet Pedro Correia Garção, whose poetical works had been pub-
lished in 1778 in Lisbon, ‘contributed to the diffusion of good taste’. ‘About the same time’, Bouterwek continued,
‘the desire to cultivate a correct style of Portuguese poetry was fostered by new translations of some of the Latin

4 A potentially rich source for this investigation is still in press (Rodrigues 2014b).
22
 Figs. 5 and 6. Title page and vignette from
Joaquim José da Costa e Sá’s 1780–81 Por-
tuguese translation of the Odes of Horace
(1800), an edition that exposed the pleasures
of the Roman countryside to new audiences
(Horace 1800: 1, 33). [Private collection]

classics’ (BOUTERWEK 1823: 366). Amongst these were Horace’s Odes, translated into Portuguese in 1780–81
by Joaquim José da Costa e Sá, in which the contentment and amenity of rural living were extolled (HORACE
1780–81). Here the deep comfort of Latin and the virtues of Rome were combined with the vernacular ease of
Portuguese. Evidence from newspaper advertisements suggests that such classical texts by Horace, Ovid, and
Virgil were widely available in Australia, and there was a wealth of English-language translations and poetic ren-
derings, and a wide literature of the second Augustan Age, such as those by Addison, Pope, Steele, and Swift.

In Portugal, the formality of baroque and rococo gardens had passed from fashion by the early nineteenth cen-
tury, and especially after the French invasion in 1807, although after his flight to Brazil, Dom João VI continued to
make new gardens in this manner. But despite the sentiments of Whately, Mason, Delille, and Gilpin, the practical
difficulties of creating verdant parks in Portugal and Australia militated against landscape gardening. Summer
droughts and the exigencies of agriculture and pastoralism made landscape embellishment difficult and placed
such improvement as a low priority. In Australia, for example, it was not until economic improvement and security
of land tenure in the 1830s to 1870s that widespread landscape gardening became feasible while in Portugal it was
largely due to foreign residents and those Portuguese educated abroad.

Yet the lure of ornamental gardening remained strong and the Portugese quinta, with its combination of utility
and ornament, had been a vernacular precursor of the ferme ornée wherein the naturalism of the landscape garden
had traditionally been represented by the ornamented farm, tilled or grazed fields substituting for deer parks, or-
chards and vineyards supplying pleasurable associations, and irregularly shaped plots allowing for the equivalent of
informal circuit paths. If the pleasures of the quinta—with its pleasing blend of the orange, olive, and vine—were
available in Portugal, the situation was less certain in Australia, where new estates were more strongly focused on
utility. Yet the climate of New South Wales suited the vine, and wealthy early settlers envisioned themselves in the
manner of the ancients.5

If landscape gardening was not a possibility for the majority, an emerging interest in the Picturesque was far
more attainable. When blended with a prevailing cultural interest in Romanticism, this defined, as landscape de-

5 New South Wales settler and outstanding colonial horticulturist William Macarthur, wrote on the vine under the Latin pseudonym
‘Maro’: see ‘Antipodean Augustans and an imaginary Australian Arcadia’ (Aitken 2010: 34–39).
23
signer and writer Elizabeth Barlow Rogers has noted, ‘a profoundly new attitude towards nature’ and one that had
a global impact (ROGERS et al. 2010: 11). William Gilpin’s books had been in the vanguard of the new interest in
the Picturesque and the period 1794–95 saw Gilpin’s ‘observations’ complemented by aesthetic treatises by Rich-
ard Payne Knight and Uvedale Price that made the link between theory and practice (in much the same way that
Gilpin’s Remarks on Forest Scenery had done in 1791) (KNIGHT 1794; Price 1794).

The South Pacific evoked a strong Romantic response from successive maritime explorers, where Rousseau’s
idea of the ‘noble savage’ amid palm-fringed islands in the verdant tropics swayed the outlook of even the most
science-hardened naturalist (SMITH 1960). Even the call at Rio de Janeiro for ships travelling to and from Austra-
lia provided a romantic (and Portuguese-influenced) interlude. First Fleet surgeon John White noted:

1 September 1787 ... When we arrived at the palace [at Rio de Janeiro], an officer of the household, who was
waiting to receive us, conducted us through a most delightful recess, hung round with bird-cages, whose in-
habitants seemed to vie with each other, both in the melody of their notes and the beauty of their plumage.
The passage we walked through was adorned on each side with odoriferous flowers, and aromatic shrubs;
which, while they charmed the eye, spread a delightful fragrance around (White 1790: 56).

In Portugal, the descriptions of Lord Byron evoked similar romantic sentiments. His poem Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage (London 1812) was loosely based on his experiences in 1809 on a trip to Portugal and his exaltations
capture what he termed ‘romaunt’ (romance), including the scenery: ‘Oh Christ! It is a goodly sight to see / What
Heaven hath done for this delicious land! / What fruits of fragrant blush on every tree! / What goodly prospects
o’er the hills expand!’ (BYRON 1812: Canto 1, XV). Byron stayed at Cintra and was charmed with its prospects
(‘glorious Eden’), including the decaying garden of William Beckford’s Monserrate (decades before it was revived
by Sir Francis Cook) (LUCKHURST 2011; Luckhurst 2014).

In eighteenth-century studies, the concept prompted by British historian Frank O’Gorman of the ‘long eigh-
teenth century’ has recently enjoyed considerable popularity, extending the century back to 1688 or earlier, and
forward to 1815 (Battle of Waterloo) or even 1832 (English Reform Act) (O’GORMAN 1997). In garden history
terms an end date of 1832 might also include Loudon’s codification of the Gardenesque, which makes good
sense given that Humphry Repton had already expressed elements of this theory some decades earlier. Under this
scenario, eighteenth-century works by the likes of Price and Repton might also be considered in terms of their
continued influence in new editions, Price on the Picturesque (London, 1842) and Loudon’s editing of The Landscape
Gardening and Landscape Architecture of the late Humphry Repton, Esq. (London, 1840) (PRICE 1842; REPTON 1840).
In Australian library collections, there is evidence of such continued usage, but perhaps these instances are more
demonstrative of a long nineteenth century, extending back to the 1770s, rather than a long eighteenth century
extending forward to the 1830s.

Figs. 7 and 8. Title page and vignette of a nat-

uralistic garden from Manuel Maria Barbosa du
Bocage’s 1800 Portuguese translation (with dual
French text on facing pages) of Jacques Delille’s
1782 poem Les Jardins (Delille 1800: i, 2). [Private
collection]
24
 It is difficult to isolate exact evidence of influence from books: we can deduce the influence and iconography
of statuary, for instance at Fronteira, with much greater certainty than we can point to instances of Whately or
Mason being influential. Yet from newspaper and other advertisements, surviving copies bearing evidence of
known provenance, and contemporary commentary, we can conclude with some certainty that published texts
exerted a great general influence. Such texts as those mentioned here had the power to transcend individual usage
and embrace more widespread trends. There is perhaps no better example of the diverse nature of such potential
influence than to end on Delille in its first Portuguese translation by Bocage as Os Jardins, ou a arte de aformosear as
paisagens (Lisboa, 1800) (DELILLE 1800).

Delille criticises formal (especially French) gardens, and so by extension, perhaps those of Portugal; he ven-
erates nature and forests, which in Portugal might include Buçaco or Sintra; invokes change within gardens and
acclimatization of plant species; all vital aspects of the changing nature of Portuguese gardens. So here was a
Portuguese translation of a French writer, evoking British (and specifically English) landscape gardening ideals,
translated by a writer Bocage (whose surname means ‘rustic wood’), with experience in Asia, for Portuguese audi-
ences, some of whom may have been in Brazil (and other colonial outposts), with mentions of the South Pacific,
specifically Bougainville in Otahetie or Tahiti, and the death of Cook in the Pacific (‘Tu Cook, infatigável, deno-
dado’—‘You Cook, indefatigable, tireless’). Delille and Bocage here produced a poetic garden of ideas applicable
to Portugal as well as Australia.

This intriguing linkage coincides with a vital moment in the exercise of imperial power in the fields of botany
and horticulture, of the global acclimatization of plants, and of the increasing influence of literature on garden
design, not just of practical horticultural texts, but embracing enlightened works of philosophy, literature, and aes-
thetics. In this, Australia and Portugal can be seen not just as receptive recipients of these influences but as active
players in a widespread and multivalent transfer of knowledge, with diverse yet often interlinked ideas producing
a rich fusion of garden making.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This text is a substantially revised and truncated version of a paper delivered at the colloquium Numa história
de jardins: um tratado em contexto held at the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Lisbon, in July 2014, to accompany an
exhibition of rare gardening texts from the BNP collections. My thanks to Ana Duarte Rodrigues for her invita-
tion to contribute, to Francisco Brito (Cólofon livros antigos, Guimarães) for his assistance with Portuguese–En-
glish translations, and to Gerald Luckhurst for sharing his knowledge on Portuguese gardens and the manner in
which they have been influenced by British traditions of horticulture and garden design. I am also grateful to my
colleagues Eduarda Paz, Paulo Trincão, Jorge Paiva, and Nelson Matos for their inspiring tours of Coimbra and
Buçaco. My thanks also to three anonymous reviewers whose comments drew my attention to several infelicities
in the draft of my paper while also greatly enhancing its Portuguese content.

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28
 VANDELLI, Domingos (1788), Diccionario dos Termos Technicos de Historia Natural extrahidos Das obras de Linnéo, com a sua explicaçaõ, e
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WHATELY, Thomas (1770), Observations on Modern Gardening, illustrated by descriptions, London: T. Payne

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29
 Gardens & Landscapes of Portugal
The 8th Marquis of Fronteira’s taste of gardening in its English cultural
context
Ana Duarte Rodrigues and Rui Castilho de Luna
Reference: Ana Duarte Rodrigues and Rui Castilho de Luna, “The 8th Marquis of Fronteira’s taste of gardening in its English cultural context”, Gardens & Land-
scapes of Portugal, CIUHCT/CHAIA/CHAM/Mediterranean Garden Society, nr. 3 (May 2015), pp. 30-59. ISSN 2182-942X URL: <http://www.chaia_gardens_land-
scapesofportugal.uevora.pt/index%20home%20presentation.htm>

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the changes introduced by the 8th Marquis of Fronteira in the garden and ties them
with his family background and English cultural context. Furthermore, it establishes links between horticulture
and music. In both cases, his taste was nurtured in his youth through appreciation and knowledge of gardens and
music, and later transformed into creative works and institutional sets.

ARTICLE
“With Mr. Alves & A. &. K. in the Bus to Bemfica to see Count Farrobo’s Quinta of the Laranjeiras.
Then mass there & then went all over the Palace. We went also to see the Marquis of Fronteira’s & Countess
Farrobo’s nearest quintas. Back in the Bus & then took a boat & went to Mr. V. Z. to dinner.”

Pedro João de Morais Sarmento, Diary, November 19th 1848

Introduction

The garden of the Palace of Fronteira was created in the post-Restauration period by the 1st marquis of Fron-
teira, D. João de Mascarenhas (1633-1681). It looks nowadays similar to its seventeenth-century descriptions.
However, during the late nineteenth-century it had a totally different appearance: The formal parterre was disguised
by a horticultural garden created by Pedro João de Morais Sarmento (1829-1903), 8th Marquis of Fronteira since
1881. Although there is already some bibliography on the Palace of Fronteira and its gardens (NEVES 1954;
MESQUITA 1992; MONUMENTOS 1997; CASTEL-BRANCO 2008; VALE 2010; RODRIGUES 2014a), there
is none which covers the transformations undergone by the garden during this particular period. In this paper,
based on the Diaries written by Pedro João, from 1848 to 1856, we identify how the modern taste of gardening
has changed the Fronteira garden into what we classify as an “almost gardenesque” arrangement; we argue that
the novel gardening choices in Fronteira’s villa can only be understood through the lenses of the 8th Marquis of
Fronteira’s family background and its unusual English cultural framework; and we establish the co-relationship
between Pedro João’s English habit of walking in gardens, the way he experiences gardens and landscapes, and his
preference for “natural” landscapes. Finally, we demonstrate how Pedro João’s creativity and actions are revealed
in both gardening and music, his two passions.

I – The nineteenth century transformations undergone by the garden of Fronteira

The garden of the Palace of Fronteira was created after the Restoration War (1640-1668) against the Spanish.
D. João de Mascarenhas (1633-1681) supported King D. João IV (1604-1656) in this war to restore Portuguese

Ana Duarte Rodrigues is Research Fellow of the Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e Tecnologia, Faculdade de Ciências, Univer-
sidade de Lisboa, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal. She works on Gardens and Landscape Studies.
Rui Castilho de Luna is a musician and researcher. He has developed a continuous research on Pedro João de Morais Sarmento who is a distant
familial-ascendant.
autonomy, and was hence rewarded with the title of 1st marquis of Fronteira, and many other privileges, including
incomes. Therefore, he built the palace and garden of Fronteira using erudite French and Italian models. It looks
nowadays similar to the seventeenth-century descriptions provided by the 1673 inventory and Alexis Collotes’
travel memories (1678). Its main feature was the great geometric parterre of box hedges with roses in the middle,

Fig. 1. Palace of Fronteira’s garden, view over the great parterre and water mirror, June 2015. Photograph by Ana Duarte Rodrigues.

Fig. 2. Palace of Fronteira’s garden, view over the great parterre and water mirror, ca. 1900. Photograph by Ana Duarte Rodrigues.

31
inhabited by lead sculptures with black painted bodies and gilded heads of dancers and statues copied from the
most famous of Ancient Greece and Rome.

Thomas Cox’s Relação do Reino de Portugal (1701) considers the garden of Fronteira as the only one worth visiting
in Lisbon as it surpasses in beauty the Royal garden (COX 1701: fl. 46). Among Royal gardens, he is probably re-
ferring to the garden of Paço da Ribeira built by King D. Manuel I (1469-1521) in the transition from the fifteenth
to the sixteenth century, which looked quite old fashioned in the baroque period.

The garden of the Palace of Fronteira is among the most praised Portuguese gardens as confirmed by foreign
travelers’ descriptions since the seventeenth century as well as contemporary international books. For instance, The
Gardener´s Garden1 (2015), which lists the most beautiful 270 gardens worldwide, selects five Portuguese gardens,
including the garden of Fronteira.

1.1. Novel gardening choices and horticultural interests

Despite presenting nowadays the same layout as in the seventeenth century, probably a token of its continuous
seduction, photographs of the turn of the nineteenth-century reveal a totally different appearance, the formal

Fig. 3. Palace of Fronteira’s garden, view over the palace and garden’s box Fig. 4. Palace of Fronteira’s garden, view over the palace and garden’s
hedges, June 2015. Photograph by Ana Duarte Rodrigues. trees and shrubs, ca. 1900. Photograph by Ana Duarte Rodrigues.

Fig. 5. Palace of Fronteira’s garden, view over the great parterre with
painted statues, water-color on score’s front cover Partitura do 8º Fado
de Alexandre Rey Colaço dedicado ao 8º Marquês de Fronteira, 1894. Photo-
graph by Rui Castilho de Luna.

1 In this issue, one can read a book review on this book by Isabel Albergaria.
32
parterre having been disguised by the horticultural garden created by the 8th Marquis of Fronteira. This took place
most probably after 1881, when the 8th Marquis succeeded to his father-in-law, the 7th Marquis of Fronteira2.

Photographs reveal four main differences: 1) the regular grid disappears under the wildness of the vegetation;
2) tall trees, such as palm trees and a huge amount of shrubs, appear and dominate the great parterre; 3) statues
become painted in white to imitate stone; 4) a huge quantity of vases appears next to the box hedges underlining
main paths. However, the box hedges’ frames stemming from the seventeenth century have not completely dis-
appeared, as if the various stratums of gardening, and therefore of history, have been maintained layer by layer.

The main changes undergone in the garden by the 8th Marquis of Fronteira took place in the field of horticul-
ture. His deep interest and expertise in this area is mirrored in many aspects of his life, mostly horticultural expe-
riences, the build-up of an art of gardening library, and finally his role as a founding member of Real Sociedade
Nacional de Horticultura em Portugal.

Horticultural interests beyond gardening are revealed by the 8th Marquis of Fronteira’s botanical experiences
and floricultural collections with exotic specimens (Boletim 1903: 169). A photograph shows labels identifying each
species in the middle of flowerbeds, as if in a botanic garden. All iconographical sources, including many photo-
graphs, show a huge amount of vases where different species of trees, shrubs, plants and flowers were cultivated
such as roses, camellias, chrysanthemums, Geranium and Pelargonium, like in a nursery (Boletim 1903: 166). In
fact, different sources stress he had the best collection of roses in Portugal, cultivated in his garden by himself, for

Fig. 6. Book with the 9th Count of Torre’s ex-libris. Library of the Fig. 7. Book with the 8th Marquis of Fronteira’s ex-libris. Library
Fundação das Casas de Fronteira e Alorna (FCFA). Photograph of the FCFA. Photograph by Ana Duarte Rodrigues.
by Ana Duarte Rodrigues.

long hours, aided by a basket with gardening tools, including his pipe, tobacco and correspondence. Together, they
show his practical expertise (Boletim 1903: 164; Diário de Notícias, February 11th 1903; O Século, February 14th 1903).

The 8th Marquis’ library on art of gardens is exceptional for Portuguese standards. Still extant at the palace of
Fronteira, these books can be identified by his two ex-libris, one when he was still Count of Torre and the other
already as marquis. Additionally, many show an entry date, revealing both his organizational skills and his up-to-
date knowledge. The singularity of his library is revealed by its many books and journals of English authors, in
their original English versions, contrary to most libraries in Portugal, where English authors are rare, and when
they appear they are in their French translations (Rodrigues 2011, 2015b).3

A few illustrations corroborate our argument. The Garden. Illustrated Weekly Journal (1872, 1873) and The Illus-

2 Documents dating from this period testify to this change.

3 The importance and uniqueness of this library is clear for including books which one cannot find at the Portuguese National Library.
33
 trated London News (1887) were journals published in England bought by
catalogue, as many other products (such as seeds). The existence of pub-
lications by Loudon - Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum (1844) journal and
Encyclopedia of Gardening (1850) - is especially suggestive for the kind of
gardenesque garden the Marquis was creating. Loudon himself christened the
gardenesque style. The Century Book of Gardening (1900) is a history of art of
gardens which includes more than sixty pages covering various aspects of
roses’ cultivation. Le Bon Jardinier (1882, 1883 and 1895) is a French journal
on horticultural garden. Les Plantes a Feuillage Coloré (1867) and Les fleurs de
Pleine Terre (1894) are books specifically dedicated to flowers and decorative
plants. And, finally, two reference dictionaries - Dictionnaire Pratique d’Horti-
culture et de Jardinage (1892-99) and the Nouveau Dictionnaire de Botanique (1870)
– complemented the Marquis’s knowledge and interests.

Despite transmitting aesthetical principles, history of gardens and de-

Fig. 8. Le Bon jardinier, 1895. Library of the
FCFA. Photograph by Ana Duarte Rodrigues.
signed landscapes, these books and journals are mainly on horticultural and
botanical knowledge. Taken together, they reveal the exceptional theoretical background of the 8th marquis of
Fronteira, and its clear English cultural framework.

Finally, the Marquis’ interest and knowledge on horticulture explains why he became one of the founding
members of the Real Sociedade Nacional de Horticultura em Portugal, and its director from 1898 to 1900 (Boletim
1903: 166; Letter of the Real Sociedade Nacional de Horticultura April 20th 1903). This was the institutional con-
text in which he developed activities to promote horticulture expertise, including the creation of the Boletim da Real
Sociedade Nacional de Horticultura and the promotion of exhibitions of roses and chrysanthemums.

1.2. Multiple currents of the English garden. The horticultural trend and the gardenesque style

The photographs discussed illustrate the transition of the garden of the Palace of Fronteira from one influ-
enced by Italian and French formal gardens to one influenced by the English gardening cultural context. However,
having in mind that the English style underwent different phases and currents, we should clarify what we mean.

What the 8th Marquis of Fronteira created in the great parterre is not the English landscape garden characterized
by large lawns and artificial lakes, which mimic nature, where a strong manipulation of space in an outsized scale
(when compared with the formal garden) took place. It is not the picturesque garden materializing a strong rela-
tionship between painting and landscape design as the garden of Fronteira was neither inspired by any painting
nor aimed at enacting a typical seventeenth century composition (as it happened with many English gardens based
in Claude Lorrain’s paintings). It is not also the romanticist garden, as the parks of Pena and Monserrate in Sintra,
Portugal are often described, as a result of intermingled influences of the English landscape garden with German
concepts of landscape and beauty. In them, the sublime is connected with the scientific capacity to measure, data
collecting and understanding the world, typical of the nineteenth century Humboldtian approach to nature (see
the relationship between Humboldt and Eschwege, architect of the Pena palace and park in RODRIGUES 2015a).

Instead, we characterize the garden of Fronteira as a horticultural garden. We follow Vanessa Remington
(2015) in separating the landscape garden, which resulted from a taste for the natural, from the horticultural gar-
den, which privileges nurture rather than nature, and emerges in the nineteenth century as a new trend, in which
34
 Fig. 9. Photograph of the 8th Marquis of Fronteira, Fig. 10. 8th Marquis of Fronteira’s visiting card. Photo-
ca. 1890. Photograph by Rui Castilho de Luna. graph by Rui Castilho de Luna.

selection and display of plants and flowers from all over the world reveal horticultural expertise (REMINGTON
2015: 204). The valorization of gardening as an elite activity (gardening was taught to Queen Victory’s children) is
also corroborated by newspaper and journal’s articles which refer to the 8th Marquis as someone who did not only
rely on gardeners, but practiced gardening himself.

Going a step further, we suggest to use another concept to describe and understand the garden of Fronteira.
We refer to the gardenesque style as it was theorized by John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843): the value of trees that
should grow wild to their full size; the value of exotic species; a garden as a collection of different species (even
if not a botanic garden) (LOUDON 1850: 1167). Further developments in the gardenesque style became associated
with circular shaped flowerbeds full of flowers of different colours, species (exotic preferably) and sizes.

Having in mind the specificities of the garden of Fronteira, we introduce the term “almost gardenesque” to
characterize the modifications implemented by the 8th Marquis of Fronteira. He did not plant circular shaped
flowerbeds because he did not destroy the seventeenth century garden, respected the previous design, although he
added something totally new and wild to the former geometric pattern. While flowers, namely roses, were abun-
dant in Fronteira’s great parterre, the previous geometric-square pattern was covered by plants and trees but never
completely destroyed. Nineteenth century photographs show some box hedges and even some topiary, but at the
same time tall trees, palm trees and shrubs invade the parterre, as if different stratums of the family’s memory were
conveyed by the garden. This was probably the way chosen by the 8th Marquis of Fronteira to honor his family’s
ancestors.

II – The cosmopolitism of the family background and the English cultural framework of Pedro João
de Morais Sarmento

2.1. The rise of the family Morais Sarmento and their cosmopolitan life

Cristóvão de Morais Sarmento (1788-1851), father of the 8th Marquis of Fronteira was born in Bahia, Brazil.
He was a natural son of Tomás Inácio de Morais Sarmento, judge of the High Court in Bahia and wealthy sugar
cane producer, and was later in life legitimized by his father, just as it happened with his brother4 Alexandre Tomás

4 IAN/TT, nº 320, modelo 14, estante 5. Letter from the Queen D. Maria I of Portugal to Cristóvão Pedro dated November 17th1806.
35
de Morais Sarmento (1786-1840), future 1st Viscount do Banho. Although born in Brazil, both brothers were
educated in England, then studied Law at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. Cristóvão de Morais Sarmento
became a diplomat in Copenhagen and London and served for about forty years as legate or Ambassador from the
Kingdom of Portugal5. He was the leading personality behind the negotiation of the treaty of the “Quadruple Al-
liance” (1834). The last twenty-five years of his life were spent in the court of Queen Victoria of England (1819-
1901; Queen since 1837)6. Cristóvão Morais de Sarmento received from the Queen of Portugal the title of Baron
of Torre de Moncorvo,7 then of Viscount of Torre de Moncorvo,8 and various Royal presents9. Therefore, the two
natural born brothers owe their social ascension to their own merit, facilitated by their overseas provenance from
the Atlantic area of the Portuguese empire. This family context set the ground for the next generation, in which
many members held Portuguese and European nobility titles.

Pedro João de Morais Sarmento was the eldest son of Cristóvão Pedro de Morais Sarmento, and of his wife
D. Carlota Guilhermina Jordan (1806-1842). He was born in Copenhagen on December 27th, 1829, and educat-
ed in London, where he lived probably since 1835, when he was six years old10, and most probably until he got
married11. He had six brothers and sisters who reached high social status, receiving in most cases nobility titles12.

Pedro João de Morais Sarmento received the title of Baron of Torre de Moncorvo on December 22nd, 184813.
He married with D. Maria de Mascarenhas Barreto (1823-1914), daughter of the 7th Marquis of Fronteira, in 1857.
Being the only child, and heir of the House, when her father died in 1881, her husband Pedro João became the
8th Marquis of Fronteira14.

Having grown in England, Pedro João partook of a cultural context very different from that of other nobles
of his age educated in Portugal. Furthermore, due to his father empowerment, he belonged to the social sub-

5 The salary he disposed when delegate at Copenhagen in 1821 amounted to 4 contos de reis (thousand reis, ancient Portuguese currency
unit) and later in 1828 it increased to 10 contos de reis (thousand reis) per year. This high value explains the wellbeing of his family, although
in his 1846 will Cristóvão de Moraes Sarmento considers his children will inherit the small amount of 1000 pounds (DOCUMENT 2: 4).
6 Pedro João recalled King Albert of England words in his 1852 Diary: “(…) saying that he had known him very well & respected him
very much & altogether he was very kind & gracious to me.” (MORAIS SARMENTO 1852 January 1st).
7 Title created by Queen D. Maria II of Portugal in May 23rd, 1835.
8 Decree signed by the Queen D. Maria II of Portugal in July 13th, 1847
9 He received gifts from Prince Augusto Beauharnais (1810-1835) in 1835: “Diamonds & Emeralds Necklace, Earrings, Brooch and
Ferronière; together with the Diamond head chain, containing in the center the ring given to me in 1835 by the Prince Dom Augusto”
(DOCUMENT 2: 14). Prince August Beaurnais married Princess D. Maria II in January 1835, but passed away two months later, thus
this present was given between January and March 1835.
10 Pedro João and his sister Maria Carlota Perpetua were both born in Copenhagen in 1829 and 1834, respectively. However, their third
brother, Alexandre Tomás was born in 1835 in London and all their other brothers and sisters were born in London, except for Tomás
Inácio, who was born in Lisbon in 1838. Thus, it is safe to assume that after Pedro João became six years of age he lived in London. This
fact explains why he wrote his journals and all his personal documents and notes in English.
11 He got married in 1857 and his 1856 Diary proves he is still in London by then.
12 Alexandre Tomás (15.11.1835-19.02.1871) became the 2nd Viscount da Torre de Moncorvo; Cristóvão Pedro (3.1.1837-?) was Com-
mendator of the Orders of S. Estanislau of Russia; Tomás Inácio (2.11.1838-10.01.1875) was the 1st Viscount de Morais Sarmento and
married with the daughter of the Perfect of Marseille; Carlota Amália (2.2.1840-?) became Marquise of Oldoini, an Italian title acquired
through her second marriage and Ana Maria Juliana became Countess of Anadia and Countess of Villar Seco, also following two suc-
cessive marriages. Carlota Amália married first Albert Georg Sandeman (1833-1923) in London in 1857. He was the son of one the
three best friends mentioned in the Will by Cristóvão de Morais Sarmento, Mr. George Sandeman of Highbury Place (Morais Sarmento,
1846: 16). The Sandemans held an important company of Sherry and Porto wine. Albert George Sandeman was the chairman of G.G.
Sandeman, Sons & Co. Ldt., the director of the Bank of England between 1895 and 1897, the president of the Chamber of Commerce
in London in 1808 and in 1872 he was commissioner of Income Tax for the city of London. Albert Sandeman borrowed often money
to Pedro João when there were delays in government’s payments (MORAIS SARMENTO 1852 January).
13 IAN/TT, Registo Geral de Mercês, D. Maria II, liv. 29, fl. 230-230v.
14 IAN/TT, Registo Geral de Mercês, D. Luís I, liv. 36, f. 190v.
36
group of the Portuguese nobility related to English circles and diplomacy15. By 1848, when he visited Portugal
for three months, his close social network included members of the high aristocracy of Portugal,16 many having
sailed to England in the ship Belfast with Queen D. Maria II in 1828, and remaining in exile until the Liberals were
able to fight back Absolutism. Examples include the dukes of Saldanha, Palmela, Terceira and his own father, the
Viscount of Torre de Moncorvo. This elite of Portuguese nobles shared experiences and difficulties surpassed in
England, and held strong connections with this country and English culture.

During his sojourn in Lisbon in 1848, Pedro João, his father and brothers stayed at the Hotel de l’Europe, at
Rua Nova do Carmo. They always attended mass at the Church of S. Domingos (Document 1: fl. 16v.) and often
went to the Cemetery of the Prazeres at Campo de Ourique. According to his Diary17, Pedro João visited quintas
influenced by the English style of gardening, and participated in many social encounters such as meals, balls, par-
ties, theatres, and operas, the various activities revealing English habits of modernity and cosmopolitism. Further-
more, the Diary also gives many hints about the Lisbon’s cityscape, its social, artistic and cultural life, reminiscent
of the city described in the writer Eça de Queirós’ Maias.

Pedro João’s education in England and the network of nobles and diplomats holding strong relations with the
British Empire set the ground for the novel gardening choices which were behind the transformation underwent
by the garden of Fronteira into a horticultural garden, in a singular appropriation of one English style not very
common in Portugal.

2.2. Gardens, villas and landscapes

The 8th Marquis of Fronteira’s taste for gardening was developed since his youth through visits to gardens and
villas in the English “natural” style. He brought from England the eye trained in the English style of gardens,
and through his acquaintances he visited villas and parks in Portugal created or reshaped in the gardening English
fashion, a minority in the Portuguese gardening context.

Regent Park18, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, especially the Serpentine19 and St. James Place20, were part
15 His social network included many diplomats: Julião Cortés was the Portuguese vice-consul in London in 1848; F. T. Van Zeller was
general-consul of Portugal in mid-nineteenth-century; Mr. Paiva was secretary of the Brazilian diplomatic body in London; Lobo de
Moira was secretary of the Portuguese diplomatic body in London; Mr. E. M. Rebello was vice-consul; Ferreira de Pinto Soveral was at-
taché of the Portuguese diplomatic body in London; Valdez was attaché of the Portuguese diplomatic body in London and Comendador
Marques was a minister of Brazil (Document 1, 2 and 3).
16 The nobles of his close social network were: the Duke of Palmela, D. Pedro de Sousa Holstein (1781-1850) who lived for a long
time in London where he was ambassador; the Duke of Saldanha, D. João Carlos Gregório Domingos Vicente Francisco de Saldanha
Oliveira e Daun (1790-1876); the Duke of Terceira, D. António José Severim de Noronha (1792-1860); the 7th Marquis of Fronteira, D.
José Trasimundo Mascarenhas Barreto (1802-1881); the Marquis of Vianna, D. João Paulo Manuel de Meneses (1810-1890); the 1st Count
Farrobo, Joaquim Pedro Quintela (1801-1869); and the 1st Viscount Benagazil, D. Policarpo José Machado (1796-1875).
17 The 1848 Diary of Pedro João de Morais Sarmento, held at the Palace of Fronteira’s archive, was written when he was 17 years old
during a visit of three months in Lisbon. The Diary published in this paper is the first of a series of diaries written by D. Pedro between
1848 and 1856, before he got married. The journals are written in English because it was his second language. What emerges in these
journals is a sophisticated alertness concerning his social and cultural life, intertwined with descriptions of visits to gardens and boule-
vards. The 1848 Diary began when Pedro João was leaving England to Portugal by ship, in the ship called “Affonso”, with his father and
with his two brothers Alexander and Cristóvão. The diary describes the travel since Liverpool, through London, Antwerp, Bay of Biscay,
Vigo, Oporto, until they arrived in Lisbon on October 12th, 1848 (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 11v.; fl. 14v.).
After the 1848 Diary, a modest notebook in his dates were written with his own handwriting, he bought proper diaries at the bookseller
Letts, Son & Steer, 8, Royal Exchange (printed, inside the Diary 1856).
18 “After Luncheon went to Regent Park in search of Mr. Sampaio’s house in Westbourne Terrace, there I found out that Mr. Sampaio
had removed & that Westbourne I. was near Hyde Park. Went to Moira’s who was much better. He is going to spend a few days at O.
Sampaio’s. J. Caffary & another person came & we took Moira to I. in a cab / then took a walk in the Park & Kensington Gardens.”
(MORAIS SARMENTO 1849 February 11th).
19 “About 3 ½ pm. I went out down Park St. to the Serpentine” (MORAIS SARMENTO 1851 February 16th)
20 “met Strode coming out, walked with him to Mr. Fortes in St. James Place, out of town. Then he accompanied me as far as the Union
37
of Pedro João daily routines in London. Following Alessandra Ponte’s apt wording, they were places where one
breathed not the “spirit of the Place” but the “Spirit of Civilization” (PONTE 1991: 373-386).

Kensignton Gardens became a public park in 1841, and became famous for its Serpentine Lake, created in
1730, and the Summer House, projected by William Kent (ca. 1685-1748) in 1735. Pedro João often walked in the
city21, a habit acquired in England22. He used to take a walk in the recently built Regent Street (DOCUMENT 1:
fl. 8), then the most fashionable street in London, and the right place to experience a modern mobility of gaze.
The act of walking facilitated a detached manner of ob-
servation, which has been consistently explored in city
context23, but seldom applied to gardens. We argue that
it was through this practice that Pedro João was able
to observe and to become acquainted with the English
style of gardening, which he then brought with him to
Portugal.

Visiting botanical and zoological gardens24 was an-

other new fashionable activity practiced by Pedro João
while in England. He visited them frequently and not
just on special occasions25. In the 1848 Diary, Pedro João
where I breakfasted & after walked down to Sandeman’s Count-
Fig. 11. Pedro João de Morais Sarmento’s Diary, October 10th 1848. Pho-
tograph by Ana Duarte Rodrigues. ing House & spoke to him about the Rose of Fundo belonging to
Queen Maria 2ª which is at the London & Westminster Bank in our
care & name having been left to by Papa. (…) and then took a turn in the park.” (MORAIS SARMENTO 1851 March 13th).
21 “walked about the town to see the Lions” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 1v.); “walked about a little” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 4v.); “We walked
home the rest going in the carriage” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 5v.); “Took a walk in Regent St.” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 8); “Took a walk early”
(DOCUMENT 1: fl. 11v.); “Went out with Papa to buy a hat & then walked about the town” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 15v.); “After Luncheon
went with A & K & Salles to see the Aqueduct. We took a great walk” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 16); “to see the D. of Palmella’s Quinta at Lu-
miar & as we came back we walk through the fair of Campo Grande” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 16v.); “after walking about a great deal I went
back to the Custom House” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 17); “Walked about the place in the morning” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 21v.); “Took a walk
went to see the cathedral & the church of St. Vicent de Fora” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 24); “Took a little walk & then in a boat to Mr. V. Z.
to dinner. Walked home in the evening.” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 26); “To Mr. V. Z. with Felix & Edward after walking about the town with
them” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 27v.); “Then took a walk to Junqueira & back” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 30); “Then we took a little walk in the
Passeio Publico” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 30v.); “Went out late & took a walk having met Silva” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 31); “took a walk with
him to leave cards” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 31v.); “Took a little walk & then dined with Papa” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 36); “Walked home to
dinner” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 40v.); “took a little walk” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 41v.); “Hence I walked up to Rua de Páo de Bandeira with the
girls” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 42); “We walked to the Hotel de France (…) Walked back to the church” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 42v.); “took a
little walk” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 44v.); “Walked with them to the Port Office” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 49); “Took breakfast with the officers,
landed & walked about with them” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 49v.); “Then we took a little walk in the Public Walk” (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 53).
22 “took a walk in Bond St.” (MORAIS SARMENTO 1849 February 10th); “I walked with D. up to Harley St. He left some cards. Then
took a Hansom in Beford St. & to Kensignton Gardens. We met Strode who walked with us. Young D. Sampayo was also there & he
talked to me for some time. We met Mr. Wilson who was walking with another woman (Miss French). Strode left us & then we met Mr.
Grantley. Walked round by the Chrystal Palace & took a hansom in the road & so to Brompton Crescent to Mr. Hampden who is not very
well. Mr. Grantley came home while we were there. Walked with A. to Hyde Park Corner & then home in a Hansom.” (MORAIS SAR-
MENTO 1851 January 19th); “walked across the Park to the end of Parliament St. & then left Strode & walked up to Goodyer, Chemist
31 Regent St Waterloo Place” (MORAIS SARMENTO 1851 January 20th); “after dinner I walked to Strodes” (MORAIS SARMENTO
1851 January 22nd); “all three up to Hyde Park, Cumberland Gate in a cab. Walked across to the Serpentine & up & down there. Slutfild
left us & I remained there a short time with A. Walked with him up Piccadilly to Strode’s to leave a Paper” (MORAIS SARMENTO 1851
February 17th).
23 The “art of walking the streets of London” is also an “art” of living in the modernity.
24 For example, he visited the Zoological Gardens in London on September 14th, 1848 (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 2). “After took an open vij.
te & to fetch Maria & Helen Holmes & so to the Botanical Gardens to the concert, but left a storm came on.” (MORAIS SARMENTO
June 28th and again on July 11th 1853).
25 “In the evening to the zoological gardens” (MORAIS SARMENTO 1854 July 20th). The following evening he went again to the zo-
ological gardens and paid an extra 5,0 for his aunts (MORAIS SARMENTO 1854 July 21st). The next year, he still registered some visits
to the zoological gardens (MORAIS SARMENTO 1855 April 30th).
38
registered a visit with his brothers Alex and Cristóvão to observe the lions in Liverpool, and the zoological garden
of London (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 2). In following years, some diaries’ entries also registered the frequency and the
money spent in zoological gardens’ visits.

Pedro João’s habit of garden walking is very un-

usual for Portuguese standards, because Portuguese
gardens are conceived as gardens “to stay” instead of
gardens to walk. The space in Portuguese gardens is
highly compartmentalized under a certain unity, in-
cluding different small cloistered and intimate areas.
Among the most famous compositions of Portu-
guese gardens stand the walls made with “conversa-
deiras” or “namoradeiras” (seats to talk and to date)
and “alegretes” (flowerbeds implanted in the walls).
Furthermore, “casas de fresco” (summer houses)
Fig. 12. Photograph of the 8th Marquis of Fronteira in Mondariz, 1896. Pho-
are always present in Portuguese gardens. So, after tograph by Rui Castilho de Luna.

a short walk under hot weather people would stop to rest and refresh. To walk in gardens and parks is a typical
central and northern European habit materialized in long pathways and alleys.

Having practiced the art of walking the 8th Marquis of Fronteira visited and experienced gardens, quintas
(farms), and villas in the English way. Additionally, the 1848 diary testifies to his frequent walks in the modern
Passeio Publico26 (Public Promenade), a closed and public paid garden created by the Marquis of Pombal in 1764
for all Lisbon inhabitants, irrespective of social status, but which was never very popular (RODRIGUES 2014b).

Pedro João often visited the Quinta do Lumiar of the Duke of Palmela, D. Domingos de Sousa Holstein Beck
(1818-1864). Located at Lumiar, the park was created in the eighteenth century by Domingos Vandelli (1735-1816)
for the Marquis of Angeja (1716-1788), a great collector of Natural History. By 1793, the Quinta do Lumiar was
already renowned as one of the three best botanic gardens in Lisbon. D. Mariana de Castelo Branco, a Marquis
of Angeja’s descendant, sold it to the 2nd Duke of Palmela in 1840. During the duke’s lifetime, the Belgium bota-
nist Rosenfeld, the Austrian botanist Friedrich Welwitsh (former gardener of the Botanic Garden of the Escola
Politécnica), and the gardeners Jacob Weist and Otto worked in garden, and were behind the changes which gave
the garden a new splendor, for which contributed the exotic species coming from overseas but bought in England.

Quinta das Laranjeiras owned by the 2nd Count of Farrobo, Joaquim Pedro Quintela (1801-1869), was also of-
ten visited by Pedro João (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 19v.; fl. 34). This villa was the most ambitious landscape gardening
project of nineteenth century Lisbon, revealing not only its owner’s wealth but also his megalomania: a worldly
microcosm with neo-gothic towers, Egyptian sculptures, an obelisk, and greenhouses in the fashionable iron ar-
chitecture co-existed with geometric parterres inhabited by stone statues of classic subject matter, including myth-
ological gods and allegories. Besides walking in the Laranjeiras, Pedro João also attended a theatre performance
at the neoclassic Theatre Thalia, in which the most famous artists and foreign opera singers were invited to act.

In Pedro João’s travels to Sintra, close to Lisbon, he observed not only Romantic villas but the whole pictur-
esque landscape, the genius loci of Sintra embodied in the qualities Uvedale Price (1747-1829) imprinted in his

26 He often visit the Public Garden Passeio Publico (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 30v.). On 6th April 1856 we wrote “to then Passeio Publico & met
the Sampayo’s there – to dined with them” (MORAIS SARMENTO 1856: s.p.). Some days after he mentioned again the “walk in the
Passeio Publico with Paulla Mello” (MORAIS SARMENTO April 14th 1856).
39
designed landscape. He visited the famous villa built by D. João de Castro (1500-1548) in Renaissance, much
appreciated during the nineteenth century probably due to its biophysical conditions, including large lawns which
recalled the English landscape gardens. He also visited two of the more emblematic Romantic villas in Portugal,
Pena Park and Regaleira, although then different from today (the Pena Park was being built by King D. Fernando
II and the neo-manueline palace of Regaleira was only be built by Monteiro dos Milhões c. 1900).

Although due to its scale the garden of Fronteira does not seem the perfect place to practice the art of walking,
the wilderness Pedro João tried to recreate in the garden was inspired by the art of walking in natural style villas
and in the countryside, and also practiced in his youth when he walked daily in Kensington gardens and Hyde
Park. It is striking that there is not one single photograph of the 8th Marquis of Fronteira in a baroque garden, or
a formal garden in the French style. He clearly preferred gardens mimicking the wilderness of the natural world or
the countryside as the photograph where he is walking to the Castle of Pabroso in Mondariz countryside in June
1896 corroborates.

III – The 8th Marquis of Fronteira’s creativity in gardening and music: the two sides of the same coin

Music played a very important role in Pedro João’s life. The taste for music was nurtured by his father since
Pedro João was a child. Cristóvão de Morais Sarmento sponsored many scores such as Madame F.’s The Lusitanian
Garland. Twelve Portuguese Melodies, as Sung in Lisbon. Arranged with Portuguese & English words, and Accompaniment for
the Piano Forte (at FCFA archive). Pedro João was taught piano and became an excellent pianist. Probably due to
his skills, the piano was moved in 1856 to a prominent place at the family’s home in London - the dining room
(MORAIS SARMENTO, 1856, January 22nd). He also bought scores or books (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 24), of which
many, such as G. Wehce’s Theory of Music27, have been recently discovered in Fronteira’s palace (LUNA 2014),
showing that his musical practice continued in Portugal.

During the three months covered by the 1848 Diary, Pedro João went often to Lisbon Opera House at the
Theatre of São Carlos to listen to the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi’s (1813-1901) Attila (Venice, 1846) (DOC-
UMENT 1: fl. 23v.), to “Eran due et ora son tre” by the Italian Luigi Ricci (1805-1859) (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 36v.),
and to see a charity show performing Verdi’s I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata (Milan, 1843) (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 44)
(MOREAU 1999). Every two weeks he went to the opera, often seeing the same play. He kept this habit through-
out all his life. Already sick with diabetes he went to São Carlos to listen to the Berlin’s orchestra directed by the
Hungarian Artúr Nikisch (1855-1922), one of the best Tchaikovsky’s music interpreters (A Novidade 1903: s.p.).

He also went frequently to the Theatre D. Maria II where he listened to comedy, and to the theatre Gymnasio
(DOCUMENT 1: fl. 38v.), located in the most bohemian area of Lisbon, Chiado, near the São Carlos. As it hap-
pened with his constant garden visits, he was a frequent spectator of “theatre”, “opera”, “concert(s)”, “cirque”, as
corroborated by his Diaries’ accounts of expenses, including money spent in “repairing opera glasses” (MORAIS
SARMENTO 1852 March). A significant part of his budget, they show how relevant gardening and music were
for Pedro João.

With a group of friends, he often played music, sang and danced in balls. They usually organized parties at
the Duke of Palmela’s palace in Calhariz, Lisbon, or at the duke’s palace in Lumiar, Lisbon (DOCUMENT 1: fl.
16v.); at the Duke of Saldanha’s palace in Lisbon; at the dukes of Terceira’s palace in Pedrouços, in the outskirts

27 “paid my subscription for G. Welce’s Theory of Music” (MORAIS SARMENTO 1851 March 15th).
40
of Lisbon; at the Viscount of Benagazil’s palace, a “small party with dancing” took place (DOCUMENT 1: fl.
36); and at the Marquis of Viana’s palace a ball was organized on Pedro João’s birthday (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 51).

Pedro João was also invited to the Royal balls which usually took place on the King and prince’s birthdays at the
Palace of Necessidades and at the recently furnished Palace of Ajuda, where some sporadic official events were
already taking place.

Pedro João appreciated also music inside churches. He went to the Festival of Music held at the Church of the
Mártires on November 22nd, 1848 (DOCUMENT 1: fl. 35v.) where the best musicians of the Royal orchestras
played. This famous church located in Chiado was the seat of St Cecilia’s brotherhood, famous by its festivals and
music school.

Pedro João de Morais Sarmento was an aesthete who revealed his sensibility specifically in the two main fields
of gardening and music. In his obituaries, many journals presented him as a Kingdom’s pair who opted not to
intervene in politics to dedicate all his time to the cult of musical art and floriculture, putting special emphasis in
his magnificent roses’ collection28.

In fact, there is a striking parallelism between gardening and musical choices, as two main building blocks of the
8 Marquis of Fronteira creative options: his taste for gardening and for music was nurtured in his youth through
th

continuous visits to gardens, villas, and parks, and to concerts, plays, and opera; he was interested in gardening and
music beyond recreation, and in both cases his educated taste was accompanied by a theoretical education revealed
both by his library on art of gardens and the multiple music scores he acquired; his avant-garde taste characterized
both gardening and music choices, and was mirrored in his own almost gardenesque style, following the last trends
in gardening, and his preference for contemporary musical shining stars and pieces (Verdi was an emerging star
when he opted to listen repeatedly to his operas); he was both a founding member of the Real Sociedade Nacio-
nal de Horticultura de Portugal and a founding member and advisory board member of the Real Academia dos
Amadores de Musica (Boletim 1903: 164, Boletim 1899: 1).

Garden visits and opera attendance acquired a value much beyond mere recreational activities, and became the
springboard for his creative process in both gardening and music. After visiting and praising so many “natural”
style gardens in Portugal and England, he opted to create his own “almost gardenesque” garden, above a previous
baroque garden; likewise after listening to many plays he composed some musical scores (such as Waltz Bébé opus
3, 1875) and performed with the most renowned pianists of his time such as Rey Colaço at the Theatre of Trin-
dade, and participated in many public performances at the Conservatório (A Novidade 1903), at time for charity
(Boletim 1903: 164). In the Real Academia de Amadores de Musica’s framework he also participated in many soirées
and matinées held at the musical society in Barão de Quintela’s square, now Largo da Alegria, where the palace of
Count Farrobo-Quintela is located (Diário de Notícias, February 11th 1903).

In both cases, his originality expresses the freedom of thought of an autodidact aware of modern trends and
eager to appropriate them in his own amateur practice. His almost gardenesque garden is an appropriation, in which
he kept the memory of the Fronteira family, creating a new garden above the former undestroyed one. Likewise in
music he broke the canon and created a waltz with five movements instead of one, which was the norm.

28 Cf. “Como par do reino, o sr. Marquez de Fronteira nunca interviu acentuadamente na politica do paiz, pois, todos os seus momentos
os entregava ao cultivo da arte musical e da floricultura, tendo tido grande nome a sua magnifica coleção de rosas.” (Diário de Notícias
February 11th 1903)
41
 Final Remarks

Despite considerable scholarly output on the Palace of Fronteira during the past decades, many periods of the
garden’s history have received no scholarly attention. In this paper, we focused on one of them, bringing to light
the figure of the 8th Marquis of Fronteira and his English cultural background in order to show how it shaped his
gardening and musical choices.

Based on the diaries he wrote from 1848 to 1856, which offer an open window to the nineteenth century Portu-
guese social and cultural milieu in its relation to the international arena, and especially on the 1848 Diary, written in
English, and published for the first time as an appendix to this paper, we showed how they revealed the circulation
of gardening trends encompassed by the English style and how they were appropriated in the modifications un-
dergone by the garden of Fronteira in late nineteenth-century, from a baroque to an “almost gardenesque” style.

The family’s recent social ascent and empowerment, its immersion in the English culture and diplomatic milieu,
and its cosmopolitism provided the ground for the modernity of the 8th Marquis of Fronteira’s aesthetical sense
and creative actions in both gardening and music. His cosmopolitism and modernity is behind many aspects of
his life which clearly contradict received historical knowledge on central aspects of Portuguese society and mores
such as people’s social mobility or the participation of women in recreational and amateur public activities, a topic
which we did not address in this paper and which awaits further research.

Finally, this paper is a fresh contribution to gardening studies in Portugal by pointing and discussing an instance
of the gardenesque style in a Portuguese garden for the first time, and by proposing a new classification based on
the originality of its appropriation, which we opted to classify as “almost gardenesque”. By revealing the importance
of circulation of gardening knowledge, the role of local contexts and backgrounds, and of comparative meth-
odological approaches (in this case pointing to the contrast between gardening choices and music), as well as the
creative achievements of amateur elite actors, often disregarded in these studies, our approach demonstrates the
fruitfulness of new research lines and novel perspectives.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to acknowledge the Fundação das Casas de Fronteira e Alorna whose palace, gardens, library
and archives have been fundamental for the research behind this article, and its members for their helpfulness
throughout this work. We wish to thank Aurora Carapinha for calling our attention to the gardenesque style. Thanks
also to the referees for their comments and to Ana Simões for her suggestions and careful and accurate revision
of the manuscript.

PRIMARY SOURCES

DOCUMENT 1 – Diary by Pedro João de Morais de Sarmento, 1848

DOCUMENT 2 – Testament by Cristóvão Pedro de Morais de Sarmento, 1846

DOCUMENT 3 – Addition to the Testament by Cristóvão Pedro de Morais de Sarmento, 1850

Archive of the Palace of Fronteira

Correspondência, 20 de Abril de 1903, nº 361

MORAIS SARMENTO, Pedro João de (1849), Diary (manuscript).

42
 MORAIS SARMENTO, Pedro João de (1850), Diary (manuscript).

MORAIS SARMENTO, Pedro João de (1851), Diary (manuscript).

MORAIS SARMENTO, Pedro João de (1852), Diary (manuscript).

MORAIS SARMENTO, Pedro João de (1853), Diary (manuscript).

MORAIS SARMENTO, Pedro João de (1854), Diary (manuscript).

MORAIS SARMENTO, Pedro João de (1855), Diary (manuscript).

MORAIS SARMENTO, Pedro João de (1856), Diary (manuscript).

PRINTED PRIMARY SOURCES

Boletim da Sociedade Nacional de Horticultura de Portugal, Tomo I, Nº 1, Abril de 1899

Boletim da Real Sociedade Nacional de Horticultura de Portugal, Revista mensal, destinada a registar o movimento da Real Sociedade e a fomentar o de-
senvolvimento da horticultura, floricultura e fruticultura portuguesas, colaborada pelos sócios da Real Sociedade, onde se encontram distinctos escriptores agrícolas,
horticultores, agrónomos, médicos veterinários, agricultores, jardineiros, viticultores, etc, Tomo IV, Anno IV, Março de 1903, nº 11, Lisboa: Imprensa
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(2007), Relação do reino de Portugal, 1701/Thomas Cox, Cox Macro, Lisboa: BN.

Diário de Notícias, Lisboa: F. A. Martins, 10/2/1903

Diário de Notícias, Lisboa: F. A. Martins, 11/2/1903

Diário de Notícias, Lisboa: F. A. Martins, 12/2/1903, “Marquez de Fronteira”

A Novidade: revista de literatura, artes e industrias, Porto: [s.n.], 10/2/1903, “Marquez de Fronteira, Fidalgo e Artista”

O Commercio de Vizeu: Folha regeneradora/dir. B. de Tóro, Vizeu: [s.n.], 12/2/1903

O Século: edição seminal do jornal O Século para o Brazil e para as colonias, Lisboa: Augusto Peixoto, 14/2/1903, “Marquez de Fronteira”

Les Plantes de Feuillage Coloré. Histoire- Description – Culture – Emploi des espèces les plus remarquables pour la décoration des Parcs – Jardins – Serres
– Appartements, précédé d’une introduction par Charles Naudin, Membre de l’Institut publié sous la direction de J. Rothschild, 2ème édition revue et agmentée
de nouvelles gravures, Paris: J. Rothschild, Éditeur, Libraire de la Société Botanique de France, 1867.

Dictionnaire pratique d’Horticulture et de Jardinage, ilustre de prés de 5000 Figures dans le texte et de 80 planches chromolithographées hors texte, com-
prenant: la description succincte des plantes connues et cultivées dans les jardins de l’Europe; la culture potagère, l’agriculture, la description et la culture de toutes
les Orchidées, Broméliacées, Palmiers, Fougères, Plantes de serre, plantes annuelles, vivaces, etc.; Le tracé des jardins; le choix et l’emploi des espèces propres à
la décoration des parcs et jardins; L’Entomologie, La Cryptogmamie, la Chimie horticole; Des éléments d’Anatomie et de Physiologie végétale; la Glossologie
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APPENDIX

DOCUMENT 1 – Archive of the Fundação das Casas de Fronteira e Alorna, Diary by Pedro João de Morais de Sarmento, 1848.

Diary 1848.

From Sep.r 12th

…de Moncorvo

[fl. 1] 1848 12 Tuesday 9th September

Left Seymour S.t at 8 a.m. & then Euston 12 Station at 9 a.m. by the express train for Liverpool. Mess.n, Ribeiro, Neves, Manchers,
ses & c accompanied us to the station we changed carriage at Crew & the movement of the vehicle from that place to Warrington was
dreadful & from thence to Liverpool it was very unpleasant. We arrived at Liverpool at little pact 3 p.m. were met at the Station by
Mafe.r Portas, Captain Lisboa I. P. Lisboa. Took a boat & went to the pier & then in a small steamer to Transmere, off which place the
“Alffonso” was Lying.

[fl. 1v.] September 9th 13st Wednesday 1848

The “Affonso” ought to have left today but it was impossible, Captain Lisboa having still a great many little things to do. Went on
thou with Papa A. & K. Walked about the town to see the Lions with Mr. Corte Real. In the evening I went with P. Lisboa & Parker to
see the Chinese Exhibition & then we took tea at Stork’s hotel & then returned on board.

[fl. 2] 1848 14th Thursday 9th September

44
 Went on thou with P. Lisbon & Parker. We got on an mini bus [?] & went to see the Zoological gardens.

[fl. 2v.] September 9th 15th Friday 1848

Went on shore a little while with Papa A. & K. To bestood Julião da Cortés Portuguese vice consul & then went & bought some
cheeses & returned on board.

[fl. 3] 1848 16th Saturday 9 September

We got the steam up & everything ready to start, when the Engineer came up & said that there was something the matter with one of
the values & to repair it, it was necessary to enter the dry clock, which we did, but as no light or fires were allowed on board [?] in clock
& as Mr. John Van Zeller had offered us beds &, we accepted his offer, & got a cab & went to his house. We took tea with him & slept
there. Papa, Allick & Kiki29 in one room & Led & I in another.

[fl. 3v.] September 9 17th Sunday 1848

After breakfast we walked to the “Affonso” & learnt that a screw had been droped into a [?] evidently on purpose by those Engineers
who were sent away. I was all put to rights in half an hour, But the vessel could not leave the dock on account of another Steamer, that
was in the same dock, not permitting us to admit the time he returned to Mr. Van Zeller’s & then Mr. Corte came in a carriage to take
us to his son in law Mr. Bach Son’s house, which is on the north bank of the Mercey at the mouth of the river, opposite New Brighton.
We dined there, it was quite a family party Viz Mr. & Mrs. Harmutte another son in law of Mr. Cortes, Mr. Chilton & Mr. C’s two sons.

We returned in the evening with some coming with us. I went outside with the eldest to smoke.

[fl. 4] 1848 18th Monday 9 September

Breakfast with Mr. Van Zeller & then went on board. We left the Dock at 1 1/2pm & Liverpool at 4 pm. Admirable Grensell & rev-
erend other persons were on board, & dined with us & then left us in a little steamer that accompanied us out of the river. They left us
about 8. pm. Going on beautifully at the rate of from 11 to 12 knot an hour.

I went to bed on the [?] in the saloon, but awoke & got up at 11 ½ from the noise made by porting the helm. The reason was that in
getting out of the way of a large vessel we very smarty ran over a small Portuguese Ychat that was sailing without lights. The night was
very dark. Some of her span & rigging couched us.

[fl. 4v.] September 9 19th Tuesday 1848

At a little before 2 a.m. Mr.

The Chief Engineer came & said that the season escaped some where & that it was necessary to go at half speed to see what was the
matter. In about a ¼ of an hour he said that we must stop the Engines and make for this nearest Port as there was something the matter
& we could not go on. So we set some sails & made for Holghad which was the nearest. We arrived there at 9 pm having picked up a
pilot. I went on shore with the officers & walked about a little.

[fl. 5] 1848 20th Wednesday 9 September

Lady Stanley of Aldesley, two of the daughters, & her two granddaughters, daughter of Lord & Lady Eddisbury visited us. They
invited us to go & take lunch on with them tomorrow.

Captain Lisboa [?] received visits from the different authorities of the Port.

[fl. 5v.] September 9 21st Thursday 1848

Having made a pair of shear on board, we took out the hope of the starboard cylinder & also the piston & them we discovered that
the bottom of the Cylinder was broken into six pieces consequently it was necessary to return to Liverpool. In the afternoon I & some
of the officers went in a carriage with Captain Ladel & paid a visit to an old lady named Vickers & then to Lady Stanley’s where we met
the rest. We took luncheon & the young ladies showed us the place. We walked home the rest going in the carriage. Some of the officers
dined with C. Lady on board his vessel & we went after to a ball we got up on the dock of his vessel. We left at midnight & all the way
slept & was covered with men with blue clothes.

[fl. 6] 1848 22nd Friday 9th September

We got one of the large boats ready & in the afternoon we went in it to Lady Stanley’s when young ladies were on the beach waiting
for us. & I prevailed on Lady Stanley to allow them to take a little row in the boat. We rowed all over the bay. & c. In the evening we went
to take tea & milk Punch with Mr. Vickens escorted by Captain Ladd. Which was the most stupid affair I was assisted at yet. When we
returned it rained very hard.

29 Brothers of Pedro João de Morais Sarmento. Allik is probably is brother Alexandre Tomás and Kiki might be his brother Cristóvão
Pedro..
45
 21st

Our Cousin Adelaide30 birthday.

B. 1821 Died 13 Nov. 1835

Aged 14 years.

[fl. 6v.] September 9th 23rd Saturday 1848

Left Holyhead at 91/2 am & arrived at Liverpool at 8 ¼ pm performing the journey with one Engine & yet going at the rate of 7 or
8 knots an hour. One of the Government steamers from Holyhead accompanied us for fear of accident. It was commanded by Captain
Wylde.

[fl. 7] 1848 24th Sunday 9th September

Stoped on board all day. M. Lisboa came from London & with Captain Wylde dined with us.

[fl. 7v.] September 9th 25th Monday 1848

Left Liverpool by the Express at 5 pm having left the Affonso at 3 pm & arrived at Euston lg at 10 ¾ pm & at Seymour St at 11 ¼ pm.

[fl. 8] 1848 26th Tuesday 9th September

Port day dined with Mr. Mwes. Took a walk in Regent St. Se.

[fl. 8v.] September 9th 27th Wednesday 1848

Went to see Mr. Moira.

Left for Brighton by the J. P. M. train, having left Seymour St. at 6 pm. We arrived at Brighton at 8 ¼ pm.

[fl. 9] 1848 28th Thursday 9th September

Brighton is very full. Miner is stopping at Warwick Manior. There was not room in that home so I, Allick, & Kiki where obliged to
slept in the Hotel. Mr. Lisboa & Family is also staying at Warwick Mansion & also Mr. Penna.

[fl. 9v.] September 9th 29th Friday 1848

Walked about met Primislan Spirling. Very fine.

[fl. 10] 1848 30th Saturday 9th September

Us yesterday, this evening we changed Hotel & went to the Im & Hotel. Mr. Dick Heming is at Brighton as also the Dalyde. Beautiful
weather.

[fl. 10v.] October 10th 1st Sunday 1848

Went to Mass at 11 am. Gained a great deal today.

[fl. 11] 1848 2nd Monday 10th October

Dined with Baron Goldsmith31 at the Wick32.

[fl. 11v.] October 10th 3rd Tuesday 1848

Took a walk early. We left Brighton by the 11 ½ am. Train & arrived at London at 1 ½ pm. Sir Chapma Marchale came in the same
train carriage with us. I went to see Moira. Came home to dinner. Found that P. Bellem had been to see me. Went to see him he is staying
at the York hotel Germyn St & going to Antwerpt the day after tomorrow. Took a recome dinner with him & his Cousin.

[fl. 12] 1848 4th Wednesday 10th October

Today we dined with Mr. Peres. Took a walk as minch. Met Lord G. FitzGerald. Went to see P. Bellow but could not find him at home.

[fl. 12v.] October 10th 7th Saturday 1848

We left Seymour St.[street] at 10 am. for Waterloo Station when we met Mr. Ribeiro Oliveira Brito &c &c. Left the Waterloo St. at
11 am & arrived at Southampton at 2 pm. We went on board the Steamer immediately it is the “Montsore” Captain Brown. It is full of
Passengers. Left Southampton Water at 3pm. The weather was beautiful.

30 Cousin of D. Pedro João de Morais Sarmento, daughter of his oncle Visconde do Banho, D. Alexandre de Morais Sarmento.
31 The Baron Goldsmith will play music with D. Pedro João de Morais Sarmento and he is very wealthy.
32 A very famous hotel of the same level as Ritz.
46
 [fl. 13] 1848 8th September 10th October

The weather was pretty good. We entered the Bay of Biscay about 8 pm having passed the Ushent light. I did not feel very well & got
sick after dinner, strong eating plumch-pudding & drinking Champagne.

[fl. 13v.] October 10th 9th Monday 1848

The sea was very rough today, & very bad weather. I did not feel very well.

[fl. 14] 1848 10th Tuesday 10th October

Very nasty weather but I felt a great deal better.

[fl. 14v.] October 10th 11th Wednesday 1848

We saw land at break of day & anchored at Vigo at 10 am. Took the Jupiter, just as we were going in the Captain came on board of
us. Left Vigo at noon. It was beautiful weather & I felt myself quite well. We arrived off Oporto at 8 ½ pm & having made signals with
Blue lights rockets & sautly firing a cannon & boat came out & took the passengers &c. It was an amusing sight to see how they were
knocket about. We remained there about an hour. It was a beautiful moonlight night.

[fl. 15] 1848 12th Thursday 10th October

Very fine weather & we went on famously. Arrived at Lisbon between 5 & 6 pm. Mr. Van Zeller came on board, & we went on shore
almost immediately here we met Mr. G. Ribeiro. We went to the Hotel de l’Europe where we intend staying. It is situated in Rua Nova do
Carmo. Papa went immediately to Pedrouços to see Mr. Gomes de Castro & after tea I took a little walk in the Rocio &c.

[fl. 15v.] October 10th 13th Friday 1848

Went out with Papa to buy a hat & then walked about the town with A. &. K. came home to Luncheon & then we went with Sales
to Mr. G. Ribeiro’s house in S. Pedro d’Alcantara. It is a very pretty house.

[fl. 16] 1848 14th Saturday 10th October

After Luncheon went with A. & K. & Salles to see the Aqueduct. We took a great walk. In the evening went all to the theatre of D.
Maria 2. Saw O’Neil there.

[fl. 16v.] October 10th 15th Sunday 1848

We went to Mass at the Church of S. Domingos at 11 am. & then to visit the Mr. Amarals in Rua da Condeça. They live in the home
where my grandfather33 died.

After luncheon we went Mr. G. Ribeiro to see the D. of Palmella’s Quinta at Lumiar & as we came back we walk through the fair of
Campo Grande. We went in an English Breakfast.

[fl. 17] 1848 16th Monday 10th October

Went out in March of Mr. Oliveira’s house & after walking about a great deal I went back to the Custom House & there they directed
me to Rua Nova d’Alegria where I went but he was not at home. Home to luncheon & then went there again, found Mr. Silva at home.
Stop with him upwards of an hour. After dinner to Mr. O’Neil. The guard that is near her door challenged us & we were some time
before we knew what to do, not being accustomed to that.

[fl. 17v.] October 10 17th Thursday 1848

In the morning with Papa in a Sege to the Duke of Saldanha’s & Count of Thomaz. In the afternoon to see Madame Ribeiro with A
& K. we went out with Mr. Ribeiro who took us across the Campo d’Ourique to the Cymetery of the Prazeres where we spent some time
looking at the D. of Palmella’s family tomb & intry to find one of Cousin’s graves in which we were not successful. As we came back we
passed by Mr. Meres house & spoke to his sons who were at the window.

[fl. 18] 1848 18th Wednesday 10 October

Wrote to Mary & Pinto.

Went to Mr. V. Z. Counting house34 to see A. V. Z. & in the afternoon to Mr. Meres where spent most part of the afternoon.

33 His grandfather was D. Tomás Inácio de Morais Sarmento.

34 Probably a “Casa de Câmbios”.
47
 17th Thursday

Cecila Van Zeller Born = 182735

= 21

[fl. 18v.] October 10 19th Thursday 1848

In the morning to C. Farrobo not in town. Afterwards to Mr. Ribeiro who lent me his horse to go to Bemfica. I got half way there
when I remembered that I had forgot a letter from Faustina to Emilia. Went to catch it & then to Bemfica by Rua de S. Jozé. Dined with
Mr. Merés family at Bemfica came back to leave the house at Mr. Ribeiro’s & then went to take tea with Mr. Meres to St. Isabel with the
other part of his family.

[fl. 19] 1848 20th Friday 10 October

To & Mr. Almeida in the morning, he is very unwell. Took A & K to Mr. Merés. Came home & waited until Augustus Meres came.
Went visit him into the church of the Martyrs & then in to St. Isabel to catch A & K. In the evening to the D. of Palmella.

[fl. 19v.] October 10 21st Saturday 1848

To Mr. Meres. In the afternoon we went in the Britzton to the Laranjeiras to see the Viscount Benagazil36. Then home dressed &
then took A. & K. to Mr. Ribeiro’s & then went to dine with Sir G. H. Seymour. They had already begun dinner when we arrived. The
party consisted of the Austrian Ministers & his lady, the friend & Russian Ministers. Duke de Saldanha Mr. Gomes de Castro Lord &
Lady Desart. Mr Knorring & ourselves.

When to catch A. & K. We stoped a little while at Mr. Ribeiros.

[fl. 20] 1848 22nd Sunday 10 October

Left Lisbon for Cintra in the Britzken. I sat on the house. We left a little after 9.am & arrived about 1.pm. Stoped at Victor Hotel. We
got some donkeys immediately & went to see the Pena, Quintas da Penha Verde & da Regaleira. Fonte dos Amores pelos Castanhaes.
Come home & dined. Just after dinner Salles (who arrived to late in the morning to go with us) arrived rather [?] having dined with a
friend of his.

Papa did not feel well & made up his mind to return to Lisbon having sent a [?] to Lisbon for the carriage.

[fl. 20v.] October 10 23rd Monday 1848

Got up early & Papa having changed his mind & the carriage not having returned (Papa felt much better) he got all of us that in P.
myself A & K & Sales on horses mules & donkeys & one mule for the baggage.

Accompanied by a man & a boy we left Cintra at 8.am & arrived at Mafra at 11.am. We stoped there 2 hours but saw nothing. It had
been a beautiful morning but now it got very over craft. Left Mafra at 1.1/2 pm lz not a very good road & arrived at Varatojo37 at P. M.
made our supper with the Batchelor seakettle & went to bed in the library.
(to go any further)

[fl. 21] 1848 24th Tuesday 10 October

The Cazeiro is called Manoel, his wife Joaquina & his little girl Engracia. This morning we had very bad weather with a good deal of
rain which lasted all day. We dined off a turkey we bought on the road. Our dinner being made by Joaquina who did it exceedingly well,
considering.

We received a visit from some neighbours.

Joaquina’s Father arrived from … to say that Mr. G. Ribeiro who intended paying us a visit had got as far as that place but that the
weather & the road were so bad that he could not make up his mind.

[fl. 21v.] October 10th 25th Wednesday 1848

Much finer weather. Walked about the place in the morning. In the afternoon we all went to Torres Vedras. Mr. Ribeiro sent one of
the Duke of Palmella’s servants with the money which Papa forgot at Lisbon. We arrived today.

[fl. 22] 1848 26th Thursday 10th October

We left Varatojo at 9 ½ am. The men not having brought the mules &c at 7 ½ as they promised. The fact was the annimals had just
arrived with a loud of Bacalhau from Ericeira. We met the most horrible road I have ever been upon yet & beginning to rain in the af-

35 Daughter of Mr Van Zeller, owner of the Counting House. She had more or less the same age as D. Pedro João de Morais Sarmen-
to.
36 Friend of Pedro João de Morais de Sarmento. A great patron of music and had a palace with garden in Benfica, Lisbon.
37 The Convent of Santo António do Varatojo belonged to the family. It was bought by Pedro João de Morais de Sarmento’s father.
48
ternoon at 3 ½ pm we stoped at Aruda38 for the night.

The Arrieros made all the opposition they could for they wanted to get on to Alhandra tonight & with some night go on to Villa
Franca to return to Torres Vedras Amoreiras with a board of French hitch.

[fl. 22v.] October 10th 27th Friday 1848

Got up at 6 ¼ am. Beautiful day. We left at 7 am the road from this Place (Aruda) to Alhandra is a beautiful Macadamina one quite
as good as an English one. We arrived at Alhandra a little before 9 am. Got on board the steamer at 2 pm arriving at Lisbon at 4 pm. We
were met at the Quay by Mr. G. Ribeiro & Mr. Antonio Ribeiro & went home to the Hotel immediately.

[fl. 23] 1848 29th Saturday 10th October

Went to have my hair cut & then to look for Mr. Van Zeller’s home. Found it at last in Rua do Pao da Bandeira. I did not recognize
Cecilia39 & Baby but they are both grown in so fine and pretty girls. Went from thence to Mr. Ribeira who arrived from London with his
family. In the evening August & Meres came.

[fl. 23v.] October 10th 29th Sunday 1848

Went to the Beija Mão40 at 12 ½ morning. In the afternoon to Mr. Ribeiro & in the evening to the Opera.

It was the King’s Birthday & consequently a dia de Grande Gala. I went behind the scenes with Felix V. Z.41 The Opera was Verdi
Attila.

[fl. 24] 1848 29th Monday 10th October

Took a walk went to see the cathedral & the church of St. Vincent de Fora. In the afternoon I went to Mr. Meres’s at St. Isabel to buy
some music. Henriques alone was at home. I met Antonio & Augusto as I went home. We all dined at Mr, Van Zeller’s today.

[fl. 24v.] October 10th 31st Tuesday 1848

To the Palace with Papa it being the Infante’s Luis birthday.

Evening to Mr. Meres.

[fl. 25] 1848 31st Wednesday 10th October

To mass at S. Domingos.

Afterwards to Mr. Van Zeller, where we dined & stoped the evening.

[fl. 25v.] November 11th 1st Thursday 1848

Jommy’s Birthday. B. 1838-10

To Mr. V. Z. Counting Home. Then took a boat at the Caes –Sodrés I went to Mr. Van Zeller. In the evening to Mr. Gomes de Castro
where I met J. Castro.

[fl. 26] 1848 3rd Friday 11th November

To the hair dresser with A. & K. to have their hair cut. Took a little walk & then in a boat to Mr. V. Z. to dinner. Walked home in the
evening.

[fl. 26v.] November 11th 4th Saturday 1848

Met Felix & Edward Van Zeller. Went to Mr. Meres Henriques at home. With Papa in a sege to the Duke of Terceira at Pedroiços
to dinner.

[fl. 27] 1848 5th Sunday 11th November.

To mass at S. Domingos at 12 o’clock. After to M. Oliveira’s. Diner with Mr. O’Neil.

[fl. 27v.] November 11th 6th Monday 1848

To Mr. V. Z. with Felix & Edward after walking about the town with them. Dined with the Duke of Palmella.

38 “Aruda” is probably Arruda dos Vinhos.

39 I tis probably Cecília Sofia van Zeller (17.10.1827-4.4.1908).
40 The “Beijá-Mão” was at the Palace of Ajuda.
41 It is probably Félix van Zeller born in London on the 17th December 1823 and died in Lisbon on 28th February 1866.
49
 [fl. 28] 1848 7th Tuesday 11th Movember

To the Convent of the Carmo. Don Carlos showed me over the building which is the Barrack for the Municipal Guard & then we
went to the Music room to hear the Bem Play. D. Manoel de Souza Coutinho came.

To Mr. V. Z. dined at home. In the evening to Mr. Gomez de Castro.

Mr. Almeida Ribeiro died.

[fl. 28v.] November 11th 8th Wednesday 1848

Wrote to London & to Seraphim42. Stoped at home all day. Dine at Mr. Paiva’s & went with them to the Opera. They have a house
there now & then. M. Almeida was buried in the “Prazeres”43 today.

[fl. 29] 1848 9th Thursday 11th November

Wrote to Mr. Blyth. Went to see Mr. Meres, but not at home. Dined at home. In the evening to Mr. V. Z.

[fl. 29v.] November 11th 10th Friday 1848

Mr. Ribeiro came, with him to the Rocio to buy some lottery tickets & then to see the [?].

To Mr. V. Z. with A. & K. where we dined & stoped the evening.

[fl. 30] 1848 11th Saturday 11th November

To Mr. V. Z. office. Then took a walk to Junqueira & back. Dined at home & then went to St. Isabel but when I got to the Largo das
duas igrejas44 I remembered that it was Mr Meres birth day & that consequently all the family would be at Bemfica.

Came back & stoped at home.

[fl. 30v.] November 11th 12th Sunday 1848

To mass at St. Domingos at 11 o’clock with Mr. Alves & A. & K. stoped also daring the 12 o’clock mass, which was attended by the
municipal guard. Then we took a little walk in the Passeio Publico. Dined at Viscount Benagazil.

[fl. 31] 1848 13th Monday 11th November

Did not feel very well & having taken some pills last night I remained at home nearly all day. Went out late & took a walk having met
Silva. Dined at home, & in the evening to Mr. V. Z. where I stoped until midnight.

Cousin Luiza Adelaide45 died 1835 aged 14. Born 21st September 1821.

[fl. 31v.] November 11th 14th Tuesday 1848

Went to Mr. V. Z. office, met Edward took a walk with him to leave cards at Viscount Fonte Nova’s. Then we went to the Hotel &
had some luncheon & then L. showed a new way to go to Mr. V. Z. by the Calçada dos Paulistas. Stoped a letter while at Mr. V. Z. & then
home to dinner. In the evening to Mr. Gomes de Castro.

15th Cousin Maria Magdalena

Born 1824 – 24.

[fl. 32] 1848 15th Wednesday 11th November

Mr. V. Z. & Allicks birthday.

Allick was born in 1835-1346. Went to Mr. V. Z. Office had a crust & glass of wine.

Then to see Silva, went out a little way with him & then to Mr. V. Z. We dined there Papa dined at the Palace. We had a little dinner
party & after dinner the Fonte Nova’s & others came & we had some dancing & singing &c which I did not enjoy having a hard headache.

[fl. 32v.] November 11th 16th Thursday 1848

To Mr. V. Z.

Dined & passed the evening at Mr. Menezes. After dinner the Fonte Nova’s & some other girls came & we had a little singing &

42 Serafim de Morais Sarmento, Viscount of Banho, is his cousin and he is living in Rio de Moinhos.
43 “Prazeres” is a cemetery in Lisbon.
44 This is the square at Chiado in Lisbon.
45 Cousin Luísa Adelaide de Morais Sarmento is Serafim’s sister.
46 This is the date of birth of his brother Alexandre Thomaz, 2nd Viscount da Torre de Moncorvo.
50
dancing.

[fl. 33] 1848 17th Friday 11th November

Augusto Neves came with him to see the result of the lottery tickets. Took a boat & went to Mr. V. Z.

[fl. 33v.] November 11th 18th Saturday 1848

To Bemfica on Mr. Ribeiro now. Dined with Mr. Meres. He took us to the Quinta do Pastor.

[fl. 34] 1848 19th Sunday 11th November

With Mr. Alves & A. &. K. in the Bus to Bemfica to see Count Farrobo’s Quinta of the Laranjeiras. Then mass there & then went all
over the Palace. We went also to see the Marquis of Fronteira’s & Countess Farrobo’s niters quintas. Back in the Bus & then took a boat
& went to Mr. V. Z. to dinner.

[fl. 34v.] November 11th 20th Monday 1848

To see Mr. Penna, then to Mr. V. Z. office, then took a boat & went to Mr. V. Z. then to Mr. Alves & then to dinner. In the evening
to Duke of Palmella.

[fl. 35] 1848 21st Tuesday 11th November

Went to see H. Sampaio but he was not at home, then to Mr. Penna, & to the Sa Vianna, then to Mr. V. Z. came away with Alexandre
& dined home. to Mr. V. Z. again in the evening.

[fl. 35v.] November 11th 22nd Wednesday 1848

Went to the Festival of St Cecilia in the Church of the Martyres.

Dined at Mr. V. Z. they went to the theatre afterwards. I walked down & went there also.

[fl. 36] 1848 23rd Thursday 11th November

Went out in the afternoon to go & meet Papa to see the Duke of Saldanha, but he was not at the Secretaria so we went to Mr. V. Z.
office to see of the Packet had arrived. Then to Mr. Paiva, & then Papa went to pay another visit & I went home. Took a little walk &
then dined with Papa; Allick & Kiki went to dine at the Duke of Palmella’s.

In the Evening to the Viscount Benagazil & then to Pedrouços to the Duke of Terceira who had a small party with dancing.

[fl. 36v.] November 11th 24th Friday 1848

Edward V. Z. came; with him to the Sampaios & went out with them. To meet Papa then together to the Sec. do Reino to thank the
Duke de Saldanha, home & luncheon.

To Mr. V. Z. home to dinner.

To San Carlos.

Received my letters Patent of Baron47.

[fl. 37] 1848 25th Saturday 11th November

To the Sampaio’s To Mr.V. Z.

With Alexandre harling by Mr. V. Z. office to leave a newspaper. Stoped & dined there with them.

[fl. 37v.] November 11th 26th Sunday 1848

To the Palace with Papa to thank the Queen & king. Then to Mr. Almeida (commonly called Almeidão) who was at home, Marques
das Minas (not home) Marques de Vianna (at home) & then to see Mr. Meres at Bemfica.

Home & then to dinner at Viscount Benagazil. After diner with one of my nephews to Tia Rita’s where I met Paiva Araujo. Then
Back & went home.

[fl. 38] 1848 27th Monday 11th November

Augusto Neves came in the morning. I went after lunch to Mr. V. Z. office & then to see Mr. Penna. Papa dined at Mr. Drummond
& young O.Neil with us three.

After diner I went to Mr. V. Z. A Sampaio was there.

47 Pedro João de Morais Sarmento receives the title of Baron da Torre de Moncorvo while his father was still alive.
51
 [fl. 38v.] November 11th 30th Thursday 1848

Mr. Ribeiro came I went with him to the hairdresser Baroes to have his hair cut & then in a sege to his house.

He lent me his horse. Rode to the Sa Viana’s they were not at home. When I went to the end of Pedroiços & then back to Belem over
Monte Santo to Bemfica where I met the Meres going back to St. Isabel. I went to Mr. Ribeiro’s by St.ª Cruz das Almas &c where I met
another part of Mr. Meres family. Left the horse at Mr. Ribeiro’s & then home to dinner. In the evening to the Gymnasio48.

[fl. 39] 1848 1st Friday 12th December

Papa married Mamma 1828

To the Sampaio’s but with them. Dined at home & went to the Opera. At the expel of “Erão dois e agora são tres” I went to Mr.
Gomes de Castro.

[fl. 39v.] December 12th 2nd Saturday 1848

To Mr. V. Z. went by a new way by the Estrella. Came home to dinner & then to the Sampaio’s.

[fl. 40] 1848 3rd Sunday 12th December

To mass at St. Domingos at 12. To Mr. V. Z. Dined at home & in the evening to Mr. Souza Azevedo.

[fl. 40v.] December 12th 4th Monday 1848

To Mr. Ribeiro’s on his horse To Mr. V. Z. out on horse back with Edward but it rained so hard that we were obliged to get under
Welter at the English Tarring. Near the Calçada do Marques d’Abrantes. But wing there was no chance of its leaving off Edward went
home & I took the horse back by Rua de St. Bento. Walked home to dinner. In the evening to the Marquez da Fronteira.

[fl. 41] 1848 3th Friday 12th December

Mr. Ribeiro Came with two horses & we both rode to Lumiar Allick & Kiki came after on donkey with Sales. I rode back as I had to
dine with M. Van Zeller. Stoped all the evening there & came home with A. Sampaio.

[fl. 41v.] December 12th 6th Wednesday 1848

In the morning to Sampaio took luncheon with them & then took a little walk. I & Papa dined at the Nuncio’s & then went to Mr.
V. Z.

[fl. 42] 1848 7th Thursday 12th December

To Mr. Sa Vianna with one of Allick shirt & rain coat for D. Maria Sophia. Met Amelia V. Z. & Miss Maguire there. We sent out after
salivary luncheon. I went to Mr. Pena’s at about 2 o’clock. Then home to get my umbrella & then to Mr. V. Z.’s office. Hence I walked
up to Rua de Páo de Bandeira with the girls & Felix home & dined then to Mr. Menezes & Sampaio where I learnt from Serra Gomes
that Mr. Penna died at 4 pm.
[fl. 42v.] December 12th 8th Friday 1848

Mr. Penna was buried today.

I went to the Church of the Martyres in a sege where I met knorring the Russian Secretary. We walked to the Hotel de France, where
Mr. Penna was staying & were the only two who helped to carry the office down stairs. Walked back to the church & after the service I
got in my sege & accompanied with the rest to to the cymetery dos Prazeres. However he could not be buried today as the 24 hours had
not yet passed.

[fl. 43] 1848 9th Saturday 12th December

To tohe tailor & hair cuttes.

To Mr. V. Z. dined there.

[fl. 43v.] December 12th 10th Sunday 1848

To Mr. V. Z. to dine. K. came there on their donkey. A. couldn’t come having hurt his foot walking with Sir. Il. Seymour’s children
the other day. Came away about 11pm.

[fl. 44] 1848 11th Monday 12th December

To Mr. V. Z. office with Felix to Mr. V. Z. & then home to dinner. After to San Carlos having Moreno’s Benefit.

Pedro took a Bore. In the middle of the Opera (I Lombardi) a new woman came into Mr. Sampaio’s bore which was empty & her
appearance caused some confusion in the theatre but she was soon removed.

48 This was a theatre in Lisbon.

52
 [fl. 44v.] December 12th 12th Tuesday 1848

To the Sé to the Prazeres for the Pope, then out & took a little walk. Dined at home & in the evening to the Marquis Fronteira & then
to the Sampaio’s it being Francisco’s birthday.

[fl. 45] 1848 13th Wednesday 12th December

My grandfather (Paternal) born 1750. To leave cards at Mr. Gomes d’Oliveira, Pato49, Almeida Garrete50. To Mr. Meres, dined there
& home about 7 pm & to Mr. Castro’s it being his birthday he completed his 54 year.

[fl. 45v.] December 12th 14th Thursday 1848

Rained very hard. To leave cards at Mr. Cruz; Menezes & Serra Gomes. To Mr. V. Z. dined there & came home with Sampaio.

[fl. 46] 1848 15th Friday 12th December

To the Rocio about some lottery tickets. Then to Mr. V. Z. home to dinner & then to Mr. Meres.

[fl. 46v.] December 12th 16th Saturday 1848

The mist came in the “Pacha”

To Mr. V. Z.’s office to get some news. Went with Edward up to this home. Took luncheon there & them to leave a card at the Belgian
minister. Dined & stopet at home in the Evening.

[fl. 47] 1848 17th Sunday 12th December

To Sampaio’s stoped there the greater part of the morning & then went to dine at Mr. V. Z. it being Felixe’s birthday. He complete
his 25th year.
[fl. 47v.] December 12th 18th Monday 1848

Rained very hard all day stoped at home. Dined at the Sweedich Minister & went to Sampaio’s in the evening it being Henriques
Birthday.

[fl. 48] 1848 19th Tuesday 12th December

To General Pyres at the Braganza51 where I met Admiral Sartorian & c. Some American officer who happened to come in asked us
to go & see there steaner which in on a new plan. I left & met his Fleury & the Admiral a little later & then we took a boat at the Caes
Sodres at about 8 pm & went to see the vessel. Dined with Sir V. at the Braganza. Then home & dressed for the Ball at the Club where
I got my hat stolen.

[fl. 48v.] December 12th 20th Wednesday 1848

Bought a hat.
To Mr. V. Z.

Dined at home & then to San Carlos after to Mr. Sampayo.

[fl. 49] 1848 21st Thursday 12th December

The Affonso arrived.

Io I was going down Rua d’Alecrim with the intention of going to Paiva’s I met several of the officer’s & V. Silva. Walked with them
to the Port Office, hairdresser &c &c.

Dined at Mr. V. Z. came home with A. Sampayo.

[fl. 49v.] December 12th 22nd Friday 1848

Got up at 7 ½ am & went on board the Affonso. Took breakfast with the officers, landed & walked about with them, then to Mr.
Ribeiro’s to catch A & K, to go & dined at Mr. Meres who gave us a very good rich dinner; we spent a very pleasant evening.

[fl. 50] 1848 25th Saturday 12th December

O’ Neil came in. I went to Mr. V. Z., on Mr. Ribeiro’s horse, Edward having promised to take a ride with me, however he had gone
out coating. Went along up the Banks of the river, met Mr. Menezes & Mr. Carr. Then to the Penha da França & Senhora do Monte.

49 This is Bulhão Pato.

50 Almeida Garrette was a very importante Portuguese writer.
51 This was a famous hotel in Lisbon where the famous writer Eça de Queirós, author of the Maias, used to stay.
53
 Accompained Mr. C. to the Braganza & then took the horse back.

Dined at home & afterwards to the Infanta’s Ball being her birthday.

[fl. 50v.] December 12 24th Tuesday 1848

Dined at Mr. Walick.

It rained in torrents as we were going there.

[fl. 50] 1848 25th Monday 12 December

Dined at Mr. Van Zeller Christmas day.

[fl. 50v.] December 12 26th Tuesday 1848

To the Vianna’s but they were not at home. To V. Z. home & dined & then to the D. Maria 2 Theatre with the officer of the Affonso.

[fl. 51] 1848 27th Wednesday 12 December

My Birthday. Received Bandeja of cakes from Mr. Ribeiro. Went to lunch at Mr. V. Z. Brought Felix & Edward home with me to dine.
P. & V. Silva dined with me. Afterward we dressed & went to the Marques de Vianna ball.

[fl. 51v.] December 12 28th Saturday 1848

Wrote to London

To leave Condes at the Marquis Velada. To Mr. V. Z. office; with Felix & Edward up to Buenos Ayres but did not go in to this home
came home by the Calçada de Estrella.

Dined at Mr. Sampaios & after diner with Alexandre to Mr. Paiva when we met the V. Z. & several other people had a dance. &c &c.

[fl. 52] 1848 29th Friday 12 December

Went board the Affonso.

Lunched & dined there

Then on shore with the Immediato, Corte & V. Silva. To Tia Rita!

I & Vicente left & came home & then to the Opera. After to Marrare with A. Sampaio.

[fl. 52v.] December 12 30th Saturday 1848

Amelia V. Z. birthday. Born in 1830-18. V. Lisboa came with him to Rita’s. Then to Sampaios’ where I stop until 3 1/2pm when I & A.
Sampaio went to Mr. V. Z. where we dined. A & K dined there also but went away after dinner with Marrara. I came home with Sampaio.
[fl. 53] 1848 31st Sunday 12 December

V. Lisboa came, went to quitter to Rita’s (Maria Luiza) he had another.

Then we took a little walk in the Public Walk met Francisco Sampaio & José Figueira there we went together to the Liga at the Dona
Maria Theatre. Walked a little with him went home & then to dinner at Viscount Benagazil.

To San Carlos.

DOCUMENT 2 – Testament by Cristóvão Pedro de Morais de Sarmento, 1846

Pedro de Moraes Sarmento, Barão da Torre de Moncorvo e depois Visconde do mesmo.

Testamento em inglês datado de Londres 14 de Janeiro de 1846 e apensos dois códices um de 4 de Setembro de 1850 e outro do
mesmo dia e mês e não se percebe se ano.

IAN/TT, Casa Fronteira e Alorna nº 320, pp. 1-18.

I Christopher Peter de Moraes Sarmento Baron da Torre de Moncorvo in Portugal, having resolved to dispose of all my property
both Personal and Real, by my will and testament; from various motives, which I did not mention here, but particularly in order to ben-
efit, as much as it is in my former, my dear beloved children; and taking moreover into my earnest consideration that, with neither of
my two wives did I receive the smallest income or improvement to the property that I possessed at the time of making either of the two
marriages I contracted, in consequence then of all this circumstances; I have resolved to make my will according to the laws and eyes of
England; following the practice established in the country where I am residing at present. But being a Portuguese subject, and holding
54
at the time of making this will

Page 2

the important and honourable situation of Her Most Faithful Majesty’s Minister (Page 2) at this Court; doubles Crossed my mind,
whether a will made under such circumstances by me, would be valid and legal after my death.

To be a wise jure of what I was going to do, I consulted first one of the judges of this Kingdom, who is a gentleman well learned
both in Civil and in Common Law; and his opinion, after mature and due consideration was given to me, what such a Will, by me made
according to the Laws of this Country, where I was residing at the time of making it, would be valid and legal to all intents and purposes.

Having then declared my motives for adopting this manner of making my will, I most solemnly declare this to be my mast will

Page 3

And Testament, and accordingly I proved to dispose of all my property in the following manner.

Although I have here stated I (Page 3) received no property of any description on marrying my first wife, my devout and ever lament-
ed Charlosse Amalia Jordan; get as a mark of my great regard for her many virtues, and for the love and attachment I had for her, and
which she reattributed to be in the highest degree; it was my intention should she have survived me to leave to her half of all my property,
for her own special use, during her lifetime; the said property to revert after her death to the children born out of our marriage. Following
now these intentions; I order that out of all my property of any description, but in presence from the

Page 4

funds I may have, whether English or Foreign, my Executors shall immediately set apart, and before any other disposition contained
in this will is put into execution the sum of Six thousand Pounds which sum shell he kept under the name of Trustees, worn (Page 4) I
shall name here after to all my property, the said 6000£, on to belong immediately after my death to my six children namely (Christopher),
I mean today, Peter John, Mary Charlotte Perpetua; Alexander Thomas; Christopher Peter, Thomas Ignatius; and Charlotte Amalia Mary
de Moraes Sarmento. The interest of these £6,000 shall be paid to the Guardian of the said children for their maintenance, and the
Capital divided into six equal parts, shall they receive on coming of age or completing 21 years of age.

This sum my above rasped six children are to receive as a sort of portion from their mother; as at the time

Page 5

Of her death all the property I owned, of every description, could not exceed twelve thousand pounds.

Wills respect to the disposition of the jewels belonging to my first wife, I fully confirm here, what on (Page 5) this subject I have
declared in the Codicil I made on the 13th May 1842; which Codicil will be also in force, except on those points about which I have now
disposed otherwise in this my last will; and in consequence of the changes that have taken place, I have cancelled and destroyed the will
by me made on the 7th March 1839.

Should any of my above named four sons and two daughters die instead, or before they are twenty one years of age; the portion of
£1,000, belonging either to him, or to her, shall he equally divided among the surviving brothers and sisters out of my first marriage.

Page 6

If by a most awful visitation and calamity the said my four sons and two daughters were all to die before the age of 21 years; in that
case the property is to be equally divided among my other children born out of my second marriage; and in default of them; half of the
property (Page 6) thus left is to go to my present wife, and after her death to her sister Julianne, both of them however, to have only a life
interest; as after their deaths it is to go to the sons and daughters or their descendants, of my beloved brother Alexander the 1st Viscount
de Banho; his said sons and daughters and their descendants to inherit the other half in full, as also this one, if it should come to them.
Out of the will of my property (after taking the £6,000, already disposed of) my Executors are to secure

Page 7

A net annuity of one hundred and twenty Pounds for my present beloved wife, Caroline Whillelmine Baroness da Torre de Moncor-
vo, which annuity I settled on her before my marriage. But with this express condition, that if she marries a second time the annuity is
to cease immediately; and the capital to revert to the benefit (Page 7) of my children of both marriages, and to be equally divided among
them. If my present wife continues to live in widowhood; then after her death my children born out of my marriage with her, are each
to receive one thousand Pounds Sterling out of the capital assigned for their mothers annuity, and whatever may remain of that capital
is then to be divided among all my children.

To my eldest son, or to whom may succeed me in the Title of Baron da Torre de Moncorvo, I give the estate or property of Varatojo

Page 8

in Portugal; and one thousand Pounds St in money (if any should still remain) besides what he may be entitled to, by any other dis-
positions contained in this will.

55
 If after all the above dispositions contained in this will, anymore property should still be left, after also paying the few legacies (Page
8) further on named; whatever may then remain is to be equally divided among my children born of both my marriages. I leave entirely
to the friendship and to the good judgement of my executors so to manage the property I may leave, in the manner that may appeal to
them most advantageous to the interests of my family. I would nevertheless advise them to sell my pictures, my most valuable plate, my
best China and glass, and the finest wines

Page 9

In my cellar, and the Dresden table linen. Out of the plate my wife will be allowed to keep for her own use and of the children that
portion of plate of the daily and common use; as also the silver Tea vessel, a coffee pot and the silver tea pot and milk, sugar and sugar
bowl I bought last in London.

(Page 9) My wife will also be allowed to keep all the linen she may think proper, except the very large table cloths, with their respective
napkins, which are only four or five table cloths. She may also keep for the use of the family the six silver candlesticks known as Lord
Modens, to whom they have belonged, of which four are large and two small. The same may she do with the Bed Silver Candlesticks,
and with the French table and tea spoons, forks and soup ladle.

These and every other disposition

(Page 10)

I make in favour of my wife is always to be understood to subsist as long as she does not marry again; otherwise my children are alone
to have every benefit from their fathers property.

As my three eldest sons have all their watches and chains which I bought for them, my watch (Page 10) and chain is to go to my son
Thomas Ignatius.
My son Peter John is to have my Kist studs of Onix and diamonds with the hair of his dear mother and brothers; as also my finger
ring and pencil case with my arms and name. All my other studs or Kist buttons; waist coat buttons of gold and stones, and my own rings
are to be equally divided among all my sons, as my daughters will have the jewels of their mothers. I do here confirm to my present wife

Page 11

The gift of all the Jewels I have bought for her, which I hope she will not be under the painful necessity of disposing of in her life-
time; and that her children will inherit them from her.

I give to my sister in law Miss Julianne Marie Jordan £ 50, say fifty pounds, five from legacy duty; and to her love and (Page 11) to
her render affection, her nephews and nieces I do recommend. It is my sincere wish and the most earnest prayer I address to my beloved
wife and to my dear children, that they will all continue to live together as members of one only family; showing ever towards each other
that love and friendship which I have had for them all in my whole life.

Because by so doing they will honour and revere the memory of a render and a most affectionate husband and father.

Page 12

Besides that, by living together they may have a certain extent of comfort and of respectability, with the means that I leave to them.
What they certainly cannot obtain if living separate

As the property I leave is by far too small to afford to any of them to live decently with such scanty means.

I am with a creditor in my accounts with my late and dear brother Alexander Viscount do Banho. It is now my wish that a receipt in
full, for whatever may be owning to me, and shall he given to his (Page 12) widow and heirs.

I appoint and name as guardians to all my children, my present and beloved wife; together with my sister in law the Viscountess do
Banho, for whom

Page 13

I entertain the highest respect and esteem; and whose opinion in all that concerns the welfare of my children I request to be always
attended to; as far as it may be possible and convenient. When my eldest son Peter John, will he twenty one years of age, he is also to
be a guardian to his brothers and sisters. Having written so far this my will, I think proper to change my mind and to destroy the Codicil
made: on the 13th May 1842; and the only part of the said Codicil that I wish to be kept, are the following, which I here insert as part of
the present.

With regard to my first wife’s jewels and trinkets, it was her declared wish often conveyed to me in conversation during her lifetime,
that they should (Page 13) pass after her death, only to the daughters she might leave. Such being

Page 14

Also my wish I have then divided them between my daughters Mary and Charlotte, and there is a paper in my handwriting and signed
by me, among my papers, containing a list of the said jewels and trinkets and to whom they now belong. An exception however was made

56
to the above rule, by an agreements between my first wife and myself. Which agreement was, that the Diamonds & Emeralds Necklace,
Earrings, Brooch and Ferronière; together with the Diamond head chain, containing in the center the ring given to me in 1835 by the
Prince Dom Augusto, were to be kept for the wife of our eldest son, who should inherit my title, and to pass on in succession as an heir
loom.

“A similar disposition I wish to be kept with regard to four

Page 15

Large silver candlesticks; two of which were (Page 14) given to me in 1822 by my dear lamented brother Alexander; and the other
two I had made by Mr. Stou and Mortimer after the same pattern. They are then to pass to my successors in the title and as an heir loom.
My bank for the last ten years have been the branch Bank of London and Westminster Bank, at present at St. James’ Square there I keep
my money, as also a box with the various bonds and other papers referring to my property in the foreign funds. In my pocket books are
other papers where can be ascertained the property I have altogether.

In a tin box with a patent lock, kept at my residence, are all my valuable papers and documents I appoint and name trustees to what-
ever Property I may now

Page 16

Possess, and I may leave at my death, my three good and worthy friends, Mr. George Sandeman of Highbury Place, Mr. Francis
Ignatius Van Zeller and Mr. Adrian Ribeiro Neves. Should any of these gentlemen decline or die; my sister in law the Viscountess do
Banho shall name a person among our best and tried friends to replace the vacancy; which must immediately be filled. My beloved wife
with the assistance of the above named gentleman shall be the executors of this my will; and to those friends I recommend my wife and
my children. A similar favor I request from all the living numbers of my late dear brother’s family; to whom I have always shown the
sincerest love and affection.
To them I also recommend my wife and children. I request

Page 17

My funeral to be as private as possible, and free from ostentation and avoiding useless expenses. Professing most sincerely and de-
voutly the (Page 16) Roman Catholic and Apostolical Religion. I bay most humbly that Masses and prayers may be offered for the repose
of my soul.

To my wife and children I recommend to keep in good repair the grave and the monument of their dear sister, mother and aunt; and
ever to pray for the repose of her soul.

This will is all written in my own handwriting, in four sheets of long paper, containing sixteen pages, all numbered by me.

In conclusion I recommend my soul to the Divine Mercy

Page 18

Of Our Lord and Redeemer.

London, 14th January 1846.

Signed Baron da Torre de Moncorvo

Luiz Augusto Pinto de Soveral

George Menders

DOCUMENT 3 – Addition to the Testament by Cristóvão Pedro de Morais de Sarmento, 1850, IAN/TT, Casa Fronteira e Alorna,
nº 320, páginas 1-9 (f.; vº)

Codicil Page 1

Having made a Will and Testament signed by me on the 14th January 1846; after mature consideration brought on by the time that
has clasped since the making of that will and various changes of circumstances, which it is useless to refer, I have thought proper to make
his Codicil as additional to that Will and Testament; confirming the same on all those points that are not now expressly altered by me in
the present Codicil. I appoint my dear beloved wife Carline Viscountess da Torre de Moncorvo, my eldest son Peter John Baron da Torre
de Moncorvo with my good and trusty friend Mr. George Iglaes Sandeman, of 15 Hyde Park Gardens to be my sole joint Executors;
and as with I also name them Trustees to my properly should my friend Mr. George Sandeman decline the charge; which I hope he will
not do; in that case I appoint in his place

Page 2

57
 My friend His Excellency Senhor Ildefonso, Leopoldo Bayar; from whom (Page 2) I have always received the most uninterrupted
proofs of sincere friendship and affection.

Should death or any other cause prevent Mr. Bayar from occupying this charge, I then appoint my good and tried friend the present
Viscount Benagazil Polycarpo Jozé Machado.

My object in these nominations being only with a view of securing a friend of myself and family to guide and advise my renexperi-
enced wife and my young son.

I most earnestly recommend to my beloved wife, to my eldest son and in general to all my children always to ask for and then to
follow the sound and good advice from those three above mentioned friends of mine;

Page 3

No matter or not they are one of any executors. To the one of those three gentlemen who will accept out of regard for my memory,
the troublesome task of being (Page 3) one of my executors it is my will and determination that a mourning ring of the value of £25
will be offered.

Considering that my property is not sufficient large to give great legacies, and that all my children equally deserve from me the same
love the same affection and the same interest I declare to be null and to leave no effect to legacies contained in my will on behalf of my
eldest son for the sum of the thousand Pounds in money, and for the property or estate I possess at Varatojo.

This said property shall pass into the possession of any of my sons or daughters, who will choose to take it by auction as past

Page 4

Of his portion. Beginning with the eldest son, and after my four sons, with my three daughters should however none of my children
be disposed to keep the Varatojo property; my wife has the liberty to have it in her portion. If not my executors will dispose of it in the
best way they may think the most useful for my heirs. (Page 5) I confirm the gift to my eldest son of my Canteen, with all its appurte-
nances; and I also give to him my fine dressing case which was given to me as a present. With respect to the Jewels of my first wife that
are to pass as heir looms to the wife of my eldest son; I have here to add an express condition that the said my eldest son and heir to my
Will does make a decent and irreproachable marriage,

Page 5

With the full approbation of his step mother and aunt, and of my sister in law the Viscountess do Banho. Should he do the contrary;
he is to forfeit that gift, and those jewels are to pass to my next son, in succession of their age, and in default of none of them marrying
or complying with that express conditions, to my daughters, also in succession of their ages, and on obtaining the due approbation (Page
6) of their respective marriages from my wife and from my sister in law.

This same disposition about the jewels is also to be enforced with regard to the four large silver candlesticks, which are equally to
pass as heir looms.

Should any difficulty arise from my having given preference to the English Law in the making of my Will and

Page 6

Testament, I here most positively declare that I give up that point sooner than to have a law suit, or any disputes in my family, whom I
wish and bay to live united, as I always was with my dear lamented brother Alexander. Yet then in that case the Law of Portugal regulate
my Will. But on the most express condition that my six children by my first wife are to receive their respective portions of the Thousand
Pounds each, as the natural and legitimate heirs of their mother who died intestate.

Let me further add that though (Page 7) out this delicate transaction of deciding what ought to be my children’s portions from their
mother already declared, I have acted most conscientiously. As on no account I wanted willingly to as them the least wrong.

Page 7

My dear beloved wife is to have an absolute choice of the place, China, linen and wines, the many kirk proper to select for her own
use and for that of the children. As I am convinced the will act with great discussion in this respect. Because her circumstances being
materially changed the will see the prudence – of allowing those articles to be disposed of that will not be immediately wanted.
Among my pictures there is a very rare specimen by a famous Portuguese painter called Oliveira. It is a friar of the reformed Augus-
tines in his cell. I wish and determine this picture to be sent to Portugal, there to be most respectfully and humbly offered to His Majesty
the King (Page 8). Should his Mahesty decline to accept this very humble offer; it will then be disposed of by

Page 8

Sale. But so as to remain in Portugal.

I advise any dear beloved wife to sale her most costly jewels. I mean the Diamond earrings & the five Diamond flowers that form the
head dress, and to employ the amount in English Hands. Should the be disposed to do that, I recommend them to have them sold in this

58
county and not in Portugal where Jewels, never fetch any reasonable price.

Having written so far, I believe I did not dispose of my Raillery Canteen in my will. Consequently the word confirm about that legacy
is quite useless. But I do most positively declare that I dispose of the Canteen on behalf of my eldest son, or of him that will succeed to
my will of Baron or Viscount among my children.

Page 9

(Page 9.) Once more and for the last time let me most earnestly pray, bay and be such my dear beloved wife, sons and daughters to
continue to live together and united. This is the only means of living respectably with the short means that I leave them.

Let them beware of false and deceitful friends; who will buy from envy and from rumour to introduce discord among them!

On moments of disagreement let each of them remember what they owe to my memory and to me who loved them most tenderly!

This recollection must be powerful in aped heart and must soothe many moments of ill feeling. At heart such is the hope I carry to
the grave.

London September 4th 1850

Signed, Viscount da Torre de Moncorvo.

Luiz Augusto Pinto de Soveral

George Menders.

59
 Gardens & Landscapes of Portugal
The Douro Valley: Landscape heritage corridor of Humanity - From the
past, towards the future
Desidério Batista and Rute Sousa Matos
Reference: Desidério Batista and Rute Sousa Matos, “The Douro Valley: Landscape heritage corridor of Humanity - From the past, towards the future”, Gardens
& Landscapes of Portugal, CIUHCT/CHAIA/CHAM/Mediterranean Garden Society, nr. 3 (May 2015), pp. 60-70. ISSN 2182-942X URL: <http://www.chaia_gar-
dens_landscapesofportugal.uevora.pt/index%20home%20presentation.htm>

ABSTRACT

The conceptual convergence of the notions of landscape and heritage, conveyed by the international norma-
tive documents, assumes them as an historical construction resulting from the interaction between society and
Nature. In the Douro Valley, the presence of a significant number of landscapes (urban, rural and natural) of
interest and of international value turns it into an authentic heritage corridor. The sustainability and resilience of
this cultural landscape imply its acceptance as an inheritance received and to be passed on to future generations,
through the perpetuation of its cultural identity.

ARTICLE

1. The concepts of heritage and landscape in international documents

In the last decades, the United Nations, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, and the European
Council have been consolidating a process of reflection about the rational use and the profitability of the natural,
cultural and economic pre-existing resources. This process, materialized through the issue of various international
normative documents (Charters, Recommendations and Conventions) is marked by the evolution of the notions
of heritage and landscape. Landscape and heritage are understood, nowadays, through a wide and comprehensive
concept, as a social and historical product, as a legacy that should be preserved, valued and incorporated active and
dynamically, in the processes of social-economic development, under sustainability criteria, so that the received
inheritance can be transmitted in the long term.

In this sense, and after successive conceptual expansions, there are two fundamental questions, given the intri-
cate inter-relations between the ideas of heritage and of landscape conveyed by that set of documents. The first
question relates to the current meaning of heritage that claims a broad consideration which incorporates the land-
scape as an historical construction. And the second question relates to the operational delimitation of landscape
which, in the broadest sense, covers the set of manifestations that result from the relationships between Society
and Nature. In fact, the text from the European Landscape Convention (EC, 2000) among others texts issued by
those International Organizations, recognizes landscape as an expression of the diversity of the European Cultur-
al and Natural Heritage, and the basis of their identity. This document emphasizes precisely the idea of landscape
as a cultural and historical construction, meaning, as a space of complex organization, a product of the sum and
interaction of multiple processes, both natural and anthropogenic. The intricate tissue of the relationships that are
established between the populations and their territory, underlying the process of spatial occupation and organi-
zation, is translated in simultaneous or successive overlapping of different cultures, on the one hand, and, on the
other hand, in its articulation and juxtaposition. A fact that contributes to the acceptance of the ideas of landscape
and heritage as a palimpsest, considering a vertical reading of the space, and as a corridor that connects and relates
points or areas, from their horizontal reading. This idea is implied in the spirit of those international documents
and has in the Douro territory a clear example of the spatial and temporal continuity of the secular human actions
and marks imprinted in the territory within the historical process of construction and transformation of its land-
scape, recognized worldwide for its natural and/or cultural interest and value.

2. Brief natural and cultural history of the Douro Valley landscape

Douro River as a linear element of Iberian expression unifies the territories of the interior and coast through a
route that, in Portuguese territory extends for about 300 Km (including its international course), being character-
ized for its high geographical and cultural complexity and diversity, although it is, in its whole, an landscape unit
(CANCELA D´ABREU et al 2004: 221), of undeniable beauty and landscape and heritage richness, both on na-
tional and worldwide level. The natural and cultural history of this landscape (of landscapes) translates, precisely,
the adaptation of the human communities to the environmental variables (relieve, soil, climate, water), which de-
termined a greater concentration of the population in the inferior part of the river where the climate is milder (At-
lantic influence) and the topography less pronounced, or the construction of terraces for the cultivation of vines
on the slopes of schist, where the climate has Mediterranean influences (Alto-Douro), differentiating itself from
the most upstream section where the poly-culture (almond and olive groves, vineyards and vegetable gardens)
alternated with the granitic cliffs and the thickets that grant it a greater biodiversity. With effect, the landscape of
the Douro Valley is the result of the use that people make of the ecological niches present through arduous and
permanent work that allowed their own survival, from the beginning of the humanization of this territory (from
about 20 000 years ago) until the development of a traditional agriculture responsible for the construction of
landscapes, considered to this day, biologically balanced, socially useful and aesthetically beautiful.

The very embedded valley constitutes a morphological unit that is characterized by climatic oscillations (from
the Atlantic influences to the continental ones) and significant altimetric ones (on the margins of the river there
are many altitudes ranging from sea level, near the mouth, and 120 meters, near the border, up to the greatest alti-
tudes, associated with the ridges that reach 600 and 800 meters), being included in the Old Massif, corresponding
a geological substrate constituted mainly by schist, occurring sporadically, granite, and in which predominate the
lithosols (CANCELA D´ABREU et al 2004: 223).

Historically, the uses of the soil are determined by these natural factors and by a process of human interven-
tion, slow and progressive, of which resulted an extremely original agricultural landscape, which variable pattern
along the river, expresses a specific understanding of the territory.

The presence of the river that runs perpendicular to the ocean, fitted between steep slopes, and the grandeur
of the valley highlighted by the clipping of the valleys by its main effluents, determines distinct ecological situ-
ations that are on the basis of different cultural expressions. These are responsible for a diversity of landscapes
that, associated to the valley and the river, hold a common denominator: a high identity and strong character, a
result of the wise and enterprising work of generations that, for centuries have been able to take full advantage of
the pre-existing hard natural conditions, building on the ecological history of the place, a cultural landscape that
does not exist elsewhere. This landscape integrates an unmatched set of areas, urban, rural and natural, meanwhile
classified as “areas of protected landscape” of international value that validates, with justice, the idea of land-
scape as a dynamic cultural construction in permanent evolution and transformation. In fact, in the Portuguese
Douro territory there are four areas of worldwide recognized interest and value (from downstream to upstream):
the Historical Centre of Oporto (classified as World Heritage by UNESCO in 1996), the Vineyard Landscape
of Alto-Douro (classified by UNESCO as Cultural Landscape, in 2001), the Archaeological Park of Côa Valley

61
(inscribed in 1998 in the List of UNESCO’s World Heritage, under the designation “Prehistoric Rock Art Sites”),
and the National Park of the International Douro (Natura 2000 network) (fig.1).

Fig. 1. The Douro Valley: landscape and world heritage corridor - (A) Historic Centre of Oporto;
(B) Wine Cultural Landscape; (C) Côa Prehistoric Rock Art Site; (D) Natural Park of International
Douro.

These areas correspond to distinct and successive cycles or stages of the colonization of the territory, marked
by the rational and sustainable use of the natural and cultural resources by the human communities. The historical
process of spatial organization and occupation that underlies it, puts into evidence the construction of a land-
scape (of landscapes) that served, through time, as habitat of several people, civilizations and generations, and it
is recognized today as a unique cultural heritage in worldwide context.

This unique heritage corridor constitutes a living and evolving example of a landscape demonstrative of di-
verse periods and layers of the natural and human history. Of millennial occupation, since prehistory, the Douro
Valley constitutes a cultural and ecological corridor that testifies the adaptation of the human communities to the
circumstances of the environment. The history of its humanization reveals a secular process of landscape con-
struction (urban, rural) based on an extraordinary ability to take advantage, in the best possible way, of the difficult
natural conditions and its adaption to civilizational evolution. The urban evolution of Oporto or the cultivation
of vines in terraces, on the steep slopes, testify the effort of multiple generations that were able to construct, over
centuries, landscapes that correspond, today, to cultural assets classified by UNESCO as World Heritage.

The city of Oporto and the Paiz Vinhateiro, name given by the Baron Forrester to the territory of licorous wine
production (BARRETO 2014: 68), assume through the strong character of urban and rural landscapes, respective-
ly, the understanding of Douro Valley as a landscape and heritage corridor of Humankind. In both cases, the com-
munion with the river conveys them originality and singularity which man enhanced in the construction of such
historic landscapes, considered unique in an international ground. On the one side, José Saramago (2013: 178-186)
wrote “(…) Finally, Oporto, to really honour its name is, above everything else, this large bosom open towards the
river, but that only the river sees (…) a hard mystery of shady streets and brown houses, so fascinating, all this,
as the lights which set on fire on the slopes at nightfall, city together with a river called Doiro (…).” On the other
side, on the wine-growing landscape, Orlando Ribeiro (1997: 33-34) in one of his various descriptions made on
her, considers that “(…) Douro’s originality, deepen engraved of a great river inserted until its mouth and one of
the most prodigious works of rural engineering built by man to the external market appeal. Historic vicissitudes
that, opening to a superfluous and appreciated product a rewarding sell (Porto wine), allowed the hills dismount
and the immense and regular construction of ices. An inclusive and integration approach in Douro wine-growing
cultural landscape study is necessary. We consider that the history of this landscape is intrinsically related to the
history of the river itself, but also to the history of the quintas and the history of the rail tray.

62
 Therefore, if historically the foundation of the wine-growing country is associated with the historic quintas of
the region which origin goes back to the fourteenth and fifiteenth centuries, but especially to those built in the
eighteenth century, its re-foundation is connected with the Douro’s rail way construction late nineteenth century
(PEREIRA 2002: 141). Both structures of land exploration and of the famous wine, as well as the railway as fun-
damental structure associated to its exportation, had a vital role in the construction and preservation of the value
of memory and set up of regional and national identity.

Supported by the rail way and in a profitable alliance between the transport and science, the wine-growing land-
scape was converted in a scientific landscape (MACEDO 2011: 168, MACEDO 2012). In this case, large vineyards
were transformed in an authentic open air lab where innovative experiments have been made to fight back diseases
such as the oidium (grape-mildew) in 1852, the phylloxera (vine pest) in 1863 and the mildew in 1893, and in the
introduction of American graft porta-enxertos, both in vineyards cultivation techniques and in wine processes
(PEREIRA 2005: 189). Under a true agricultural and commercial revolution (BARRETO 2014: 131), the scientific
colonization of the wine-growing territory, had a decisive impact on landscape. It has contributed to the forsak-
ing of the most steep hills and less productive and with the most inaccessible terraces, to which they have given
the name of “mortórios” (which comes from death in Portuguese language and has no translation into English).
It was also invaded by copse wood, and considered a “(…) Douro’s ancient torment and permanent scar (…) ”
(BARRETO 2014: 78). Nevertheless, it promoted the regularization and enlargement of the more accessible and
narrow terraces with the consequent densification of grape-vines’ replantation (MACEDO 2011: 169; PEREIRA
2005: 189).

The historical process of construction and transformation of the Alto-Douro wine-growing cultural landscape
is marked by strong dichotomies which express the specificity of the place, but also the socio-economic conjunc-
ture and national politics throughout that process.

It is one of the most ancient and important delimited wine-growing regions in the world (with origin in 1756 by
Marquis of Pombal decision) considered poor, but able to produce great richness (PEREIRA 2011) it has evolved
between tradition and innovation, protectionism and free-cambium (Pereira 2011; Sequeira 2006: 138), immigra-
tion and emigration, intermingled with periods of crisis (of production, commercial, social), and of euphoria or
cleavages associated to production and to Porto wine exportation (BARRETO 2014: 93).

This heritage landscape is simultaneously characterized by the vine monoculture associated to the disperse hab-
itat and to the great properties of quintas encompassed by erudite architecture, where pleasure gardens appear. It
is also characterized by the Mediterranean multi-culture in small scale farms and concentrated peopling in villages
of vernacular architecture, where kitchen gardens and orchards exist to self-food production.

However, this diversity and landscape complexity has in vineyards and wine production its value, its major-work,
of worldwide recognition, that certainly is “(…) the most expressive agricultural landscape that has ever existed in
Portugal (…)” (CALDAS 1997: 24). The history of the Douro valley is linked since the seventeenth century to the
most profound transformation of Portuguese landscape. Behind this landscape transformation is the Porto wine
culture created with the English. The quality of this product, fame and economic value justified the slow, difficult
but irreversible cultural landscape construction (RIBEIRO 2011: 64).

Although there are some demographic and socio-economic disequilibrium in some areas of this territory (loss
of people and emigration; unemployment and lack of rail way infra-structures and of social and cultural equip-
ment’s mainly in Riba Douro and Douro Superior) and of environment dysfunctions and heritage loss of identity,

63
“(…) what is really impressive is the region as a whole. It is a spectacle that reconcile oneself with Man’s nature
(…) ” (BARRETO 2014: 110).

3. Douro River as a landscape and heritage corridor of universal value

The idea of continuum naturale and culturale as a principle of spatial organization of the historical and traditional
landscapes (and resumed, today, as a fundamental assumption under the current plans of landscape intervention
both in urban and rural environments), has, in the Douro Valley, an unmistakable example of a model of occupa-
tion of territory that has always sought the long term development both of Nature and Society.

In the Douro territory, the relationship between economy – culture – ecology created a multi-faceted and com-
plex landscape reality that, based on the use of methods and environmental optimized methods and solutions, is
anticipatory in the time of the emerging concepts of sustainability, which lead to the internalization of landscape
as a second nature by the resident populations, and which is identifiable in the adaptation of villages, of farms and
of the diversified agricultural mosaic to its surroundings and to the productive process, not only just the cultiva-
tion of the vine, but of also Mediterranean cultivations, as almond and olive trees, in slopes or in the vegetable
gardens and orchards in the more fertile lands in the areas adjacent to the water lines, and of thickets in areas of
greater altitude (AGUIAR 2000: 147) (fig.2).

Fig. 2. The Douro landscape. Photograph by Desidério Batista.

In this sense, this landscape understood as heritage resulting from successive civilizational and generational
interventions and, as such, deeply rooted in time, it acquired a social, economic and heritage value, by being com-
posed of elements of which the national identity, as well as European, depends. Indeed, of very ancient occupa-
tion, the Douro Valley constituted a …corridor of people and culture (AGUIAR 2000:145; PEREIRA 2011:20) that
here left their marks, turning it into an historical reservoir, a container of traces and memories, and in reading area
of the world. Therefore, “(…) throughout Douro vestiges from other periods of time abound, such as megalitics
monuments, old castles, villages, roads and Roman bridges, hermits and paleochristians chapels, medieval castles,
convents and Romanesque and gothic churches, (…) temples and Renaissance, Baroque or Neoclassic palaces,
iron architectures and Arte Nova…Cities and monumental and friendly villages (…) and also villages, villas and
disperse farms (…) ” (PEREIRA 2011: 20).

As an historical compendium that reveals signs of an old and continuous human presence and occupation, the
Douro cultural landscape, having the river and its tributaries as a structuring and crucial element, it takes form as a

64
collective work of art that integrates the following set of rare natural and cultural assets, considered true treasures
of Humanity to be preserved and perpetuated:

(i) The Historic Centre of Oporto, situated on the right margin of the river, corresponds to the urban space de-
limitated by the Fernandina Wall which was consolidated over the last eight centuries through a thorough process
of adaptation of multicolor houses to the rugged topography, which grants it a strong character, to which contrib-
ute, with equal measure, the monastery of Serra do Pilar and the D. Luís I Bridge, to which UNESCO attributed
the status of Cultural Heritage of the World (fig. 3, 4). It was this alive and original scenery, of the diverse houses
combined in a harmonious conjunction of forms and colors hidden by the haze and frequent fog, this piece of the
old borough in permanent dialogue with the river, the monastery and the bridge have justified such an honorable
evaluation (JORGE et al. 2000: 17).

Fig. 3. Historic Centre of Oporto. Photograph by Desidério Batista.

Fig. 4. Historic Centre of Oporto. Photograph by Desidério Batista.

(ii) Equal distinction has deserved the vineyard landscape of Alto-Douro that corresponds to the central area
of the region of Port Wine which translates into a monumental cultural landscape considered a masterpiece of the
human ingenuity to adapt to the scarcity of soil and water and to the accentuated slope, of which resulted the ar-
tistic construction of immense continuous terraces supported by walls of schist where the vines are cultivated for
the production of the famous wine, between farms of the XVIII century and villages that contribute to the per-
petuation of a traditional social-economic activity responsible for the construction of a landscape that is unique
in all of the world (fig. 5, 6); “ (…) It will be difficult to find in any other part of the world more tasty grapes
and more beautiful landscapes than these (…) ” (DIONÍSIO 1995: 537). Here, in the beginning of the second
65
half of the eighteenth century, by State political will, a region was demarked and a society and landscape was born
(BARRETO 2014: 20) which between tradition and innovation, between permanence and change has been kept
in constant evolution and transformation. From that founding act “(…) the most beautiful and painful monument
to Portuguese people work (…)” raised up (CORTESÃO 1987: 28). In fact, “(…) two colossal strengths made the
Douro which appears in front of our eyes: the river’s and Men’s. (…) Seen from the air, from the valleys, or from
the bed of the river, what one sees is always Men’s work (…)” (BARRETO 2014: 157);

Fig. 5. The cultural landscape of Alto-Douro: wine-producing farm complexes

with winemaking-terraces. Photograph by Desidério Batista.

Fig. 6. Alto-Douro vineyard landscape: traditional winemaking-terraces. Photo-

graph by Desidério Batista.

(iii) The Archeological Park of Côa is considered the biggest and most significant set of Paleolithic rock art on
the outdoors worldwide. The cultural continuity of this place, which extends for over twenty kilometers, is consid-
ered an authentic sanctuary associated to a possible veneration of the river waters, which would be sacred, shows
us hundreds of pictures of great mammals (horses, deer, etc.) with more than 20 millennia, but also more recent
pictures, dated of the Iron Age, representing stylized human figures and geometrical motifs (fig. 7); (www.uc.pt/
fozcoa; PEREIRA 2011: 41). Following UNESCO’s, the Côa Valley, integrates the Douro Valley, and provides the
best illustration of the iconographic themes and organization of Paleolithic rock art, using the mode of expres-
sion in the open air, thus contributing to a greater understanding of this artistic phenomenon. It is considered one
of the two sites of the prehistoric era, rich in material evidence of Upper Paleolithic occupation (whc.unesco.org).

(iv) The Natural Park of International Douro is considered an area of protected landscape for its great bio-
logical richness associated both to the diversity of the agricultural systems and to the natural habitats and species
66
 Fig. 7. Prehistoric Rock Art Site of the Côa Valley Archeological Park. Photo-
graph by Amélia Santos.

of the wild fauna and flora present in its territory, and it integrates the Natura 2000 network which constitutes an
European ecological network of preservation of biodiversity, considered the main instrument of conservation of
Nature in the European common space (fig.8). “(…) At the Douro international wildlife knows a rare richness in
the country (…) this region still allows species to live that have almost disappeared from the rest of the country
(…)” (BARRETO 2014: 83) establishing a fundamental area to the bird fauna living on rocks conservation of
which are examples in the Iberian Peninsula, among other species, the royal-eagle, the vulture, the black stork or
the Egyptian vulture (ICNF 2001: 117).

Fig. 8. International Douro Natural Park. Photograph by Desidério Batista.

This set of landscapes with extremely rich, intelligible historical, cultural and natural content, holds a high
identity associated to river Douro, to the morphology of the valley and the use of its slopes for both the settling
of the historic city of Oporto and for the development of the cultivation of vines, almond and olive trees. The
construction of these landscapes corresponds to the possible adaptation and transformation of the hard biophys-
ical conditions present, of which resulted a coherence of uses that, covering the multi-functionality both in urban
and in rural spaces, reveal their resilience and sustainability (fig. 9).

However, the landscape and heritage corridor of the Douro valley as a linear structure of ecological and cultur-
ally fragile landscapes demands a careful and thorough management that conciliates the objectives of environmen-
tal and heritage protection, and of agricultural and wine production with the objectives of enjoyment connected
to cultural tourism and ecotourism. In this heritage corridor of Humanity, the organized landscapes that integrate
it hold a high aesthetic quality and a singular sensorial dimension that comes from the strong feeling of grandeur

67
 Fig. 9. The historic vineyard village and the wine-producing farms. Photograph
by Desidério Batista.

resulting from the natural morphology and from the secular and balanced human interventions. The safeguard and
perpetuation of its cultural identity will pass by maintaining and valuing the traditional social-economic activities
associated to its own productive sustainability which, complemented with actions of dissemination and dynamism
of this set of protected areas for the sake of a cultural and leisure tourism, will contribute to the active protection
of the landscapes and world heritage of the Douro valley.

Although the landscape transformation of this territory had occurred throughout history, between tradition
and innovation, between permanence and mutation, maintaining biological balance, social usefulness and land-
scape aesthetics, recent changes might be threatening the sustainable development of that region.

António Barreto (2014: 276) considers that in the nearby future we need to be more rigorous in planning,
regulation and development of Douro’s region. In fact, the author stresses that because of progress, risks are per-
manent, not only because of uncertainty created, but also since profound environment and ecological unbalances
threaten conservation and renewal of natural resources. In view of this, UNESCO stresses in its last reports that
the danger of loss of Douro’s landscape identity is real, as consequence of new techniques, construction materials
and new methods of Porto vineyards cultivation: large and ill-proportionated embankments, new slopes, vertical
vineyards, or vines without modulation and terrain structure.

If the undergone changes seem unavoidable and their consequences unknown, the loss of character and land-
scape identity seems certain since traditional processes are replaced by new ones and cultivation techniques that
have nothing to do with the wine growing landscape are used.

The adulteration and destruction of what is valued as original and exceptional might cause in the nearby future
prejudice. In view of this, sustainable management of Douro’s landscape should take into consideration that its
cultural value depends directly on a complex historical structure that embodies schist terraces and pathways adapt-
ed to topography. These provide communication between estates since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries for
the spread of traditional methods of vineyard grow and for related heritage share. Consequently, the transforma-
tion of this landscape and heritage should be carefully evaluated because a loss of cultural identity will be decisive
for its future in a globalized world where other geographic regions might easily produce the same quality of wine
(CANCELA D´ABREU et al 2004: 242). Therefore, we prompt that economic benefits provided by Douro’s
wines and tourism in this region - agro and ethno-tourism, cultural tourism and cruses departing from Porto and
Régua -, should return to protect and to enhance this heritage.

68
 Fig. 10. The cruses by the Douro river. Photograph by Desidério Batista.

The future Douro’s landscape and heritage corridor, of universal value, and the social, economic and cultural
future of the people’s region are profoundly intermingled and interdependent. This fact demands an integrated
and prospective vision of its problems and potentialities. The sustainable development of the region strains some
problems’ resolution regarding the fragility of its distinct landscapes (Oporto historic center, vineyard growth
cultural landscape, sites of Côa’s rupestrian art and Douro’s international cultural landscape), such as the loss of
cultural identity and collective memory; the population decline and population aging; the high dependence on
agriculture and almost vines monoculture; and the isolation of important territory as a result of difficult access,
unemployment raise and lack of qualified public equipment. Sustainability and territorial resilience of Douro’s
valley rely in a comprehensive and inclusive approach to distinctive landscape dimensions: economic, ecologic, cul-
tural and aesthetical, through a strategy of space management that at a local and regional scale seeks to conciliate
the objectives of protection and preservation, of natural and cultural heritage, with fruition and recreational goals
associated with agriculture and commerce. If Douro’s valley, throughout millenniums of art, science and technol-
ogy have added men’s will to the construction of landscapes as World Heritage listed by UNESCO, it is duty of
present societies to legate for future generations this collective and anonymous work, legacy of a past linked to
the future, because “what in Douro is produced and built, is also thought and written” (BARRETO 2014: 279).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AGUIAR, Fernando Bianchi de (2000), “O Alto Douro Vinhateiro, uma paisagem cultural, evolutiva e viva”, DOURO –
Estudos & Documentos, vol. VII (3), pp. 143-152.

BARRETO, António (2014), Douro. Rio, Gente e Vinho, Lisboa: Relógio D´Água.

CALDAS, Eugénio Castro (1994), “Evolução da Paisagem Agrária”, Paisagem, Lisboa: Direcção Geral do Ordenamento
do Território e Desenvolvimento Urbano.

CANCELA D´ABREU, Alexandre et al. (2004), Contributos para a Identificação e Caracterização da Paisagem em Portugal Conti-
nental, Vol. II, Lisboa: Direcção Geral do Ordenamento do Território e Desenvolvimento Urbano.

CORTESÃO, Jaime (1987), Portugal. A Terra e o Homem, Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional – Casa da Moeda

DIONÍSIO, Sant`Anna (1995), Guia de Portugal, 5º Volume Trás-os-Montes e Alto-Douro, Lisboa: Fundação Calouste
Gulbenkian

European Council (2000), http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/treaties/Html/176.htm

69
 Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas (2001), Plano de Ordenamento do Parque Natural do Douro In-
ternacional, 1ª Fase – Estudos de Caracterização e Diagnóstico, Lisboa: ICNF.

JORGE, Filipe (coord) (2000), O Porto Visto do Céu, Lisboa: Argumentum.

MACEDO, Marta (2011),”Port Wine Landscape: Railroads, Phylloxera and Agricultural Science”, Agricultural History,
85:2, pp. 157-173.

PEREIRA, Gaspar Martins (2011) “Um corredor de povos e culturas”, Guia dos Rios e Barragens, Lisboa: Visão, 7, pp.
19-23.

MACEDO, Marta (2012), Projectar e construir a Nação. Engenheiros, ciência e território em Portugal no séc. XIX, Lisboa: ICS.

PEREIRA, Gaspar Martins (2006), “Os Caminhos-de-ferro do Douro: história e património”, gasparmartinspereira.pdf,
pp. 9.

PEREIRA, Gaspar Martins (2005), “O vinho do Porto: entre o artesanato e a agro-indústria”, Revista da Faculdade de Letras
HISTÓRIA, III Série, vol.6, Porto: Universidade do Porto, pp. 185-191.

PINA, Maria Helena Mesquita (2003), “Alguns reflexos da implantação do caminho-de-ferro no Alto Douro no século
XIX”, Revista da Faculdade de Letras – Geografia, I série, vol. XIX, Porto: Universidade do Porto, pp. 397-414.

RIBEIRO, Orlando (2011), Mediterrâneo. Ambiente e Tradição, Lisboa: fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

RIBEIRO, Orlando (1997), Introduções Geográficas à História de Portugal, Lisboa: Edições João Sá da Costa.

SARAMAGO, José (2013), Viagem a Portugal, Lisboa: Caminho.

SEQUEIRA, Carla (2006), “A Região Vinhateira do Alto-Douro, entre o livre-cambismo e o proteccionismo”, Revista
Universum, nº 21, Vol.2, Santiago do Chile: Universidade de Talca, pp. 138-146.

whc.unesco.org

www.uc.pt/fozcoa

70

Gardens & Landscapes of Portugal
Book Reviews
COX, Madison, CHIVERS, Ruth and MUSGRAVE, Toby,
The Gardener’s Garden, London: Phaidon Press, 2014
Reviewed by Isabel Soares de Albergaria
First, some figures: the book weighs 3.75 Kgs, is 33x28x5
cm and comprises 472 pages with around 1460 images, identifying
over 270 gardens across 5 continents and 43 countries. We can
literally say it is a heavy book!
The Gardener´s Garden was born out of a primordial act:
that of observation. Due to its contemplative nature, the act of
observing appears contradictory to action. And in reality, if we
pay close attention to its meaning, we find that the radical separa-
tion between the subject and the object which takes places during
observation has great repercussions at the level of conception and
design of gardens. Only the awareness of the irreducible dimen-
sion of subjectivity in relation with the material object, external
and uncommunicable, has allowed us to overcome the archaic
sentiment about nature, in which Man and nature participate in
the same cosmos. The symbolic moment that triggered this new
experience with nature is the contemplation of Mount Ventoux
by Petrarca. In fact, the conscience of the transcendence of the
spectacle occurs in the observer´s introspective moment.
And, to some extent, we can also regard the moment that
triggered this team of specialists in garden writing, designers and
horticulture experts to produce a list of approximately 270 of the
best gardens in the world, as the result of introspection, at which
they must have arrived after much observation. The creation of
such a list, which gathers and catalogues from a vast universe, in-
variably presupposes subjectivity - as it happens every time a col-
lection is made. The same subjectivity that allowed Petrarca, from
the top of mount Ventoux, to single out a portion of the scenery,
which acquired to him a particular and unique aesthetic value. This
condition of subjectivity is unequivocally stated in the title of the
book: the gardener´s garden. Actually, the use of a possessive pro-
noun between the subject- the gardener- and the objet- the garden-
highlights the subjectivity of the choice. And for that reason, there
will always be those who find reasons to argue and disagree with
the selection made.
For my part, I find a few. But allow me to first proceed to
a more detailed exposition of the selection made in the book. The
order in which gardens are presented regards geography, starting
with Australia and then spanning the globe from east to west, with
internal sections that group countries according to large regions.
Within each country, gardens are listed from northwest to south-
east, although this rule was not always strictly applied. In addition,
the selection made was an attempt to overcome all other barriers,
71
such as size, antiquity, or typology. Large public parks are present-
ed side by side with small and intimate private spaces; historical
gardens are found alongside ultra-modern projects; and typolo-
gies as different as formal, landscaped, botanical, tropical, alpine
or Mediterranean gardens are presented together. In this screen-
ing, that intended to be equitable, one cannot help but notice the
prevalence of modern gardens created during the 20th and 21st
centuries (66% of the total).Of those, 20% correspond to cre-
ations of the 21st century. Such preference attests to the intention
expressed by the publisher, to provide a plethora of information
to those searching for inspiration to design gardens, in addition to
the book´s value as a visitor´s guide.
To attain these two main objectives, the approach taken by
the eleven specialist and twenty-three writers who sign the texts
was to condense information in a concise table for each garden, in-
cluding the identification of the author or authors, time of design
and construction, geographical area, climate characteristics and key
words. The table also contains a short text with the description and
history of the garden, in addition to the images´ captions.
Despite the efforts to systematize information, the project
is carried out with a comprehensive perspective, accomplishing an
accumulation of unities that lack a structuring overarching frame-
work. Perhaps due to that reason, the criteria employed in the se-
lection of gardens are not very clear, giving a sense that the choice
was somewhat random or biased. In fact, how to justify such a high
number of British (53) and American (55) gardens, representing
40% of the total, compared to such a small number of gardens
from South America (7), Africa (10) or even from some European
countries with a significant landscape tradition, such as Belgium
and Denmark (3 each), and Switzerland, Austria, Poland and the
Check Republic, each of them with just one garden listed?
In relative terms, Portugal is well represented with five gar-
dens listed. However, I personally felt the absence of, at least, the
Monserrate garden, in Sintra, as well as the Gulbenkian gardens
in Lisbon. As to the gardens that were selected- Serralves Park, in
Oporto; Quinta da Regaleira, in Sintra; Palácio dos Marqueses de
Fronteira Garden, in Lisbon; Terra Nostra Park, in S.Miguel island,
and Quinta do Palheiro-Ferreiro, in Madeira island - I cannot but
salute and congratulate the authors for such a well-deserved dis-
tinction.
I started this note by addressing the physical aspects of
the book. I could not finish it without referring to its visual and
aesthetic elements. A very positive note is the marvelous cover in
salmon-colored fabric with a floral motif, conceived by Julie Hard-
ing. The design by Hans Stofregen and layout by Studio Chehade
follow a conventional and balanced approach, where colorful im-
ages abound, human presence is rigorously excluded and where
accrochage is at times excessively strident in color. A well-balanced
account among panoramic views and close-ups covers the differ-
ent perspectives of the gardens, but the absence of drawings and
layouts reveals that a generalist audience is the target of the book.

Gardens & Landscapes of Portugal
Book Reviews
REMINGTON, Vanessa, Painting Paradise. The Art of the Garden,
London: Royal Collection Trust, 2015
Reviewed by Ana Duarte Rodrigues
The first question one asks when visits the exhibition
Painting Paradise. The Art of the Garden held at the Queen’s Gallery
between March and October 2015 is that if this could be made
somewhere else. Does it exist anywhere outside England enough
paintings prints, drawings, books, manuscripts, tapestries, vases
and other products of decorative arts and some artifacts such as
sundial, ash, steel and beech to tell a history of gardens? The Brit-
ish Royal Collection made throughout history with gifts to British
monarchs and the Royal family, but mostly by their own purchases
is outstanding. The richly illustrated book that goes with the exhi-
bition shows these works of art and artifacts on gardens and adds
insight essays on History of Gardens.
Vanessa Remington who was already rewarded in 2012 for
another book, is the curator of the exhibition as well as the author
of most of the catalogue. Her expertise in miniatures explains that
she has chosen as the exhibition’s flagship a miniature by Isaac
Oliver (c. 1565-1617) entitled A young man seated under a tree (c. 1590-
95) which shows the simple pleasure of resting under a tree in a
garden.
on the difference between a maze and a labyrinth or establishes
judicious connections between gardening, art of gardens’ litera-
ture and decorative arts inspired by gardens. The book is also pre-
cious for the highlights it gives on the circulation of art of gardens’
books in England. For example, Petrus de Crescenzi’s Ruralia Com-
moda (from the beginning of the fourteenth-century) belonged to
Henry VIII, showing that it is not the originality of Crescenzi but
the popularity of his work that explains its success in the Early
Modern period. It also includes important information on English
garden manuals such as Thomas Hyll’s The Profitable arte of garden-
ing (1568), and The Gardener’s Labyrinth (1577), Leonard Mascall’s
Booke of the arte and manner how to plante and graffe all sorts of trees
(c. 1592). Parallel to this, it enhances the impact of Ovid’s Meta-
morphoses (especially the illustrated modern editions) and Colonna’s
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499) on art of gardens.
From Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings to herbals, books on
botany and various illustrations of plants and flowers, Remington’s
exhibition and book clearly show the development of a more pic-
torial method of representing natural features.
Besides the many contributions of Remington’s book for
gardening knowledge, the most relevant is the perspicacity within
the transition from the landscape to the horticultural garden. The
English garden has always been understood as the landscape gar-
den, following the “natural” style opposed to the French formal
garden. Remington presents the nineteenth century English garden
as the horticultural garden. Inside this main trend one finds the
gardenesque style. It is more difficult to accept the picturesque as a
small chapter of the landscape garden when it was a central con-
cept of aesthetical discussion on the history of the modern taste
of gardening, along with the concepts of beautiful and sublime.

The foreword by Sir Roy Strong adds prestigious to Rem- The chapter on the horticultural garden is the most com-
ington’s work and highlights the intrinsic connection between gar- pelling. There the monarchs appear as a bourgeois family and the
dens and power by pointing out the action and contribution some English garden the citizen’s garden. Through Remington’s vision
Kings and Queens of England had to gather the collection. The of art of garden history, horticultural knowledge aims to reach
book is divided into eight chapters that follow the eight nucleus high moral standards.
of the exhibition: Paradise; The sacred garden; The Renaissance
garden; The Botanic garden; The Baroque garden; The Landscape
garden; The Horticultural garden; and the garden inside (cover-
ing many decorative art objects inspired by garden motifs). Af-
ter pointing out the interlaced concepts of garden and paradise,
Remington provides an insight history of gardens from medieval
times until the nineteenth century through a wise selection of three
hundred illustrations, plans, maps and surveys that readers will not
easily find in any other book of works of art and artifacts of the
Royal Collection. Furthermore, an appendix provides illustrations
and detailed identifications of all the works shown at the exhibi-
tion. The design of the book, following the design of the exhibi-
tion, is gorgeous and appealing.

For the serious scholar, as well as for the public in general,

this is not one more interesting book on art of gardens. This is
a book that looks at the subject from a unique perspective and
makes important arguments for the interchange between the Per-
sian garden and European gardens and gives clear explanations

72

Gardens & Landscapes of Portugal
Book Reviews
MICHELS, Volker (ed.), Hermann Hesse. Freude am
Garten. Betrachtungen, Gedichte und Fotografien. Mit
farbigen Aquarellen des Dichters. Insel Verlag, Berlin,
2012
Notes from an ongoing reading, Isabel Lopes Cardoso
Being half-German, although with little practice in my birth
German mother country, I observe the importance the garden has
in the German citizen daily-life. And when we say garden, we can
say as well nature, as the former one stands out the second. The
lambda citizen who holds a garden, takes care of him with love,
spends time and energy on him and with him. He is proud of his
garden, and enjoys to share and to offer what comes from there.
To get into a bookshop for general public in a medium city such as
Bayreuth (a place of Wagner’s music cult) is, under this perspective,
an elucidative experience. Dozens of journals and publications in
the limelight that share knowledge with the reader, give tips and
talk on what is essential in this relationship of the German citizen
with his garden: the Freude am Garten.
Freude am Garten (or the pleasure in and with the garden)
is also the title of a texts’ collection by the German-Swiss writer
Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), that I found in that same bookshop,
together with the former publications. Volker Michels, who coor-
dinates this re-edition (the first edition dates from 1992), recalls the
Hesse’s cartoon by the German newspaper Der Spiegel, in 1958: a
kind of garden-dwarf in the middle of the literature Nobel prizes.
After the literature Nobel Prize of 1949 been assigned, this cartoon
would stand that Hesse would be more read and known in foreign
lands than in his own country. In Germany, scholars and journalists
considered by then that a writer or anyone who devoted part of
his time and of his writing to his garden was naive, or reactionary,
or someone who was evading from real life. Nevertheless, both the
texts on gardens and the texts on politics and culture he published
in more than sixty journals and magazines deny this picture. Pub-
lished since then in anthologies, these texts show a man aware of
the historic time where he lives in and his profound repugnance
towards the prepotency of the Wilhelmine imperial epoch. They
also clear up his critical position regarding the derangement of
the ongoing Industrialization and of the uncritical consumption
society that was built all along the process. The I and II World Wars
would become calamitous confirmations of his foresees.
The success of his first novel, Peter Camenzind (1903),
brings Hermann Hesse the possibility of living from writing. Al-
ready married and following his novel’s hero, in 1904 he chooses
an alternative way of life, matching his writing practice with his
living practice. He moves from Basel to a small village with three
hundred inhabitants, Gaienhofen, near the lake Bodensee. Here,
he searches to live under the Tolstoi, Thoreau and William Mor-
ris’ ideals: away from the city and in an intimate relationship with
nature. Simplicity, self-sufficiency, autonomy from the innumerable
73
manacles and alienations of the consumption society are the leit-
motive which supervise his option. The first and also unique gar-
den that Hesse has cultivated from root, appears here, in 1907 (lat-
er, in Bern or Montagnola, he would only modify the gardens of
the houses where he lived). Between 1907 and 1912, he cultivates a
self-sustainable garden, with berry fruits, vegetables and more than
thirty fruit trees, in the middle of numerous flower boxes. Indeed,
Hesse had a particular crush for colors and scents, which dictated
his plants’ choice. Rebuilt under Hesse’s plans, it is possible today
to visit and discover this garden, and even find, in the southern
part, a historical reconstitution of traditional boxes with the most
ancient species found in situ.
The compilation Freude am Garten opens with “Im Garten”
(In the garden), a text written in 1908 which immediately reveals
what seduces Hesse in the creation of a garden. To destabilize the
prepotency, the authoritarianism and the feeling of superiority of
the bourgeoisie, intellectuals and other delegates of the Wilhelm
II’s imperial politics, just by ploughing the earth with the hands.
Against propaganda and prominent ostentation, he priviledges a
laconic way of living in practical and creative terms. To transform
a small box, with some square metres of bold soil in a smiling col-
orful wave: what the poet brings with words, the gardener makes it
with nature, wrote his contemporaneous Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
Following Michels, this small space of freedom which the
garden idyll represents both in Hesses’s life and literary work, al-
lows him to explore until the ultimate limits of his capacities what
an individual can do to stand against a collective disaster: to resist
through the experimentation of an educational alternative model.
Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game), written between 1931 and
1942, offers a literary transposition of this educational alternative
model to counter the pernicious pedagogic practices of the brown-
shirts. Through this method he subverts the Nazi ideology. Parallel,
during those years, and following the usual embroidery between
literature and life practices, Hesse receives, advises, and financially
supports hundreds of emigrants who ran away from Nazi Ger-
man, and he steps in their favor near the Swiss police.
The lesson Hesse takes from his gardening practice is that
kingdoms, dynasties, nations wither and end by fading. However,
nature prevails, “such as flowers that each year return in the mille-
nary prairies”. He needs the garden to “flee the paper world”, that
often brings him headaches. The gardener’s work is essential to
him to mediate and contemplate (and here we shouldn’t forget his
family’s history of Protestants missionaries in India). To translate
Freude am Garten into Portuguese would be an inestimable contrib-
ute to the reflection, in Portugal, on our own relationship with
nature, the garden and on the reactivation of what in the last few
years we have observed all along the country: the proliferation of
kitchen gardens, formal or informal. These are the gardens of the
lambda Portuguese citizen. And they seem to follow precepts very
similar to Hesse’s. But what does differentiate them? And what do
they translate about our own relationship with nature?